Beginning with Outlook 2007, users can share calendars using Office Online. If you prefer not to publish your calendars on an Internet server and you have one machine running Windows Server, Windows XP or Vista, you can publish the calendar to your computer and share it with other user accounts or anyone on your network who uses Outlook 2007/2010 or Vista's Windows Calendar.

All you need to do is install IIS (Internet Information Server) on one computer and enable WebDav. With the correct permissions, all local users can access and publish calendars at
http://computer_name/folder_name

By using this method to share calendars, the calendars will be updated on a regular schedule and pushed out to the subscribers.

Tips:

• Published calendars will automatically update or check for updates once per hour.
• For network use, install IIS on a machine that will be turned on either 24/7 or on longer than the others for best results.

Publish Calendars | IIS on Windows XP

Publish Calendars

Publishing calendars in Outlook 2007/2010 is easy: right click on the calendar you want to publish and choose Publish to Internet, Publish to WebDAV server. Enter the location in this format: http://computername/folder_name, where folder_name is the folder you created in Step 4.1 below. (Computername is the name of the computer where IIS is installed.)

Note: you need to have a WebDav server set up and configured before you can publish a calendar.

Install and Configure IIS in Windows XP

If IIS is not installed (it's not installed by default):

1. Control Panel, Add or Remove Programs.
2. Select the link to Add/Remove Windows Components.
3. Add a checkmark to Internet Information Services (IIS)
4. While it's selected, click Details.
5. Uncheck SMTP
6. Click Ok then Next and wait for the IIS installation to finish.

Tip: Get your Windows XP Pro CD ready before you start so you have it handy if the installation process asks for it.

Next:

1. From Control Panel, Administrative Tools, open Internet Information Services.
2. Expand the view so you can see Default Web Site.
3. Right click on it and choose New, Virtual Directory.
4. Follow the steps in the wizard to add a Virtual Directory.
   1. The first field will be the name of the directory, such as calendar. (This name is used in the publishing URL.)
   2. The second field needs the path on the hard drive. This needs to be a folder all users will have access to – I recommend creating a folder in the root of the hard drive, such as C:\calendar.
   3. You need Read and Write permission on this virtual directory.
   4. Choose Browse if you want users to be able to browse for the calendar they want to view.

For Best security:

1. Right click on the virtual directory you created.
2. Select Properties
3. On the Directory Security tab, choose Edit in the Anonymous access section at the top of the dialog.
4. Remove the check to allow Anonymous access.
5. Click to use Windows Integrated Authentication.
6. Click OK.

This prevents people outside your network from gaining access to the calendar through the Internet.

If users will access the calendar files from other computers on the network:

1. Open Control Panel, User Accounts
2. Create a new User account for this computer. (i.e., username of Calendar)
3. Assign a password to this account.

When other members of your network attempt to access this computer, they will enter the username and password you created above. Note: a new account is not necessary if you are using this method to share calendars between user accounts on the computer where IIS is running.

IIS is now installed and ready to use to use for publishing calendars.

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Last reviewed on Sep 28, 2011