For many offices, the most frustrating experience related to Microsoft Outlook is finding out that, unless you are using Microsoft Exchange Server (including Outlook.com), there is no simple, built-in, reliable method for sharing contacts and calendars. That's right, there's no "magic wand" you can wave to enable people to easily share Outlook data without Exchange. However, it is much easier now that Outlook.com us hosted on Office 365 Exchange servers.
One reason that this goal of sharing is so elusive is that standalone users store data in Personal Folders .pst files. However, two people cannot work from the same Personal Folders .pst file at the same time, because these files are not designed for shared access. The same problem occurs if two people try to look at the same Personal Address Book. Of course, if two people share the same computer at different times of the day, they can share data; see Sharing Microsoft Outlook Info on One PC. A relatively recent development is the advent of a few products that can bypass the shared access limitations of PST files.
Beginning with Outlook 2007, users can share or publish calendars with Internet accounts. This feature allows you to email all or part of your calendar, or publish it to the Internet or any a WEBDAV server. Right click on the name of the calendar you wish to share to see these options. See Share Calendars with Local Users using Internet Publishing to learn how to publish the calendar to your own WEBDAV server.
Microsoft is ended their free calendar publishing service at Office Online website in April 2014.
Some of the tools for synchronizing Outlook data via the Web also allow other people to access the information. You can use the Yahoo and Outlook.com calendars to share your appointments with others. Outlook.com users can sync appointments and contacts with the web-based calendar and contacts when the account is configured as a Microsoft Exchange account.
When sharing a calendar using Outlook.com, share it using Outlook.com on the web. If the person you are sharing it with also uses Outlook.com, they should accept the sharing invitation using Outlook.com on the web.
Many of the solutions listed on this page will allow you to share all Outlook data.
See More Tools and Utilities for Sharing Outlook Data for additional utilities.
Contacts | Calendar | Messages | Exchange Server | Internet Free/Busy | More Information
Contacts
For methods and third-party tools to share contacts, see Shared Address Books.
If you don't have too many contacts to share, you can simply send vCard files. This is especially useful if not everyone is using Outlook, since many other products support the vCard standard.
Calendars
Many users want to share their calendar with others, but Outlook's calendar sharing feature is limited to Exchange server mailboxes, Outlook.com, or a read-only calendar published to a WebDAV server. If you don't have Exchange server, your calendar sharing options are limited to publishing a read-only calendar, sharing calendars at Outlook.com, or using a utility to share calendars.
For a read-only calendar, see Publishing Microsoft Outlook Calendars on the Internet or an Intranet.
Please note: the Office Online (office.com) calendar publishing service will be ending in April 2014.
If you don't have too many calendar items to share, you can simply send vCalendar or iCal files. This is especially useful if not everyone is using Outlook, since many other products support the vCalendar standard.
Third-party providers also offer solutions for integrated group scheduling. Many of the applications in the Tools list on this page will allow you to share calendars. See More Tools and Utilities for Sharing Outlook Data for tools that share calendar data only.
Messages
To share messages, but not contacts or appointments, you can use Microsoft Mail Shared Folders in a workgroup postoffice. Note, however, that the Microsoft Mail server is no longer supported and Outlook 2002 (and newer) is not officially supported.
Another alternative is an Internet mail server that uses the IMAP protocol. IMAP is supported by Outlook 2002 and by Outlook 98 and Outlook 2000 in Internet Mail Only mode. Oracle Collaboration Suite and CommuniGate Pro Groupware provide Outlook users with additional capabilities besides shared mailboxes, but there are many IMAP servers. Others especially targeting Outlook users include Bynari InsightServer. Versions of Outlook without built-in IMAP support can get it with a third-party provider.
Exchange Server
Microsoft designed Exchange Server specifically for sharing calendar, contact and other information, as well as e-mail. See Sharing with Exchange Server Public and Mailbox Folders.
One way for small organizations to share information without installing Exchange Server in-house is to buy space on a server shared with other companies. We've seen prices as low as $10/month per user. You need Internet access, of course, to get to the server. You should also be able to get browser-based access to your mail, as well as access from the Outlook client. Many firms are now offering individual or workgroup accounts on shared Exchange Servers. See Exchange ASP Info.
Internet Free/Busy
For calendar sharing, Outlook 2002, 2003, 2007 and Outlook 98 and Outlook 2000 in Internet Mail Only mode allow you to publish the free/busy times from your calendar to an Internet site so other people can know when you're available. You'll need to have permission to wrote to the site, others will need read permission. See:OL2002 How to Use the Internet Free-Busy Feature
More Information
If you need to share information with someone using the same PC (such as two users of a home computer), see Sharing Microsoft Outlook Info on One PC.
You can also use the Briefcase or Import/Export for a certain amount of sharing on a LAN. See Using the Briefcase to share Microsoft Outlook folders.
Other sharing tools can be found at Maintaining a Group Calendar in Outlook without Exchange and Live Group Calendar Tools.
- Sharing Calendar and Contacts over the Internet
- Sharing Calendar and Contacts: Obsolete Methods (NetFolders)
- Synchronizing Microsoft Outlook on two machines
SharePoint Foundation is also an option, but the last available version is 2013.
Hi Diane - we use a groupwise server with an outlook client that sits on top and I understand that we can't access shared calendars or proxy access (or something similar). Is there a solution you would recommend other than changing to an exchange server?
Office calendar or the sync utility from codetwo should work for you, as will some of the other products in the tools list.
Hi Diane - I have a small business with 3 people. We all use Outlook calendars, but we do not have Exchange Server. I would like us to be able to all share our Outlook calendars, without moving to Outlook 365. What is the best way to do this? I already use GSyncIt to sync my Outlook calendar to Google calendar and my Android phone. Does it make sense to try to share our Google calendars, or should we use a tool that is specifically designed to share Outlook calendars without Exchange? If you think a tool is best, which one do you recommend? Thank you so much for your help!
If everyone is using a gmail account, I would try sharing via gmail. If it doesn't meet your needs and you are all on the same local network, you can use Sync2 or similar to share between the 3 of you.
Hi,
I have a small business of 10 users all using outlook client, which connects to IMAP mail accounts from an ISP. The business wants to share calendars through their outlook clients. If they wanted to transfer to Office 365 hosted Exchange, would that be an easy transition? How about the cost associated with it?
it would be a fairly easy transition - they have a very good wizard to guide you. If you have your domain through godaddy, the wizard will update your dns too. The cost is as low as $4 per month per mailbox - this gets you 50 GB mailbox. (The $5 plan includes onedrive for business, skype for business, and sharepoint). If some people only use web mail and only need 2GB, it's $2/mailbox per month.
(I offer migration services - $150 to set up and migrate 1 mailbox, $50 each additional.)
My boss shares his outlook calendar, and I am able to send appts on his behalf when he is 'in' the office. He is currently away on travel, and I can still send appointments on his behalf, however, any new meetings that he is invited to are not visible to me unless I'm on the invite, or someone else is (who's calendar I also manage). What is the fix for this?
Do you have delegate permission on his calendar? If he shares the calendar with you and you have the correct permissions (or are a delegate), you should see everything on his calendar.
I work in a small office of 5 people. We have Outlook but do not have Exchange. Everyone needs to be able to view everyone else' Outlook calendars on our mobile devices. We use rackspace to archive. I need help!
You'll need to use a 3rd party utility to share. Upgrading your email accounts to office 365 hosted exchange or rackspace's exchange would make sharing easier, but if that is not an option, the utilities on this page should work fine.
Thanks for all your great ideas and help. I have Microsoft Office Professional 2007 and use Outlook extensively. My spouse has the same laptop(Lenovo) and phone (Samsung Galaxy Note 2) as myself and we would like all of them to be synchronized. We don't have Microsoft Exchange Server software. We only want the calendar to be synchronized and we had been using Google Calendar Sync until it stopped working August 1, 2014. I have installed Outlook Connector and followed your steps as best I could, I ended up creating another Inbox along with the one I have and it downloaded all the emails from the two servers (Outlook.com and Rogers.com). I use both email address from Rogers.com and Outlook.com and receive email from both regularly. My spouse has the same set up as me. I am presently using Local Sync but it has limitations. Here is what I would like to do and I believe it can be done but don't know how to complete all the steps properly for Outlook 2007. 1. View my spouse's calendar and my calendar as two separate calendars both in Microsoft Outlook on my laptop, or online at Outlook.com and in my mobile phone… Read more Âğ
it can work. Each of you will share your hotmail calendars with each other. The shared calendars will sync down to outlook with your own account. You'll need to copy the appt to the spouse's calendar - or, because the calendars sync to each other's accounts, just add the events to one calendar. (I'm not sure if you'll get reminders for the shared calendar- test it.)
Thanks for your reply, unfortunately I couldn't wait and I paid for a downloaded program called gSyncit which is working pretty good. I read your comments above and I don't understand the details of exactly how to do what I want using Outlook. I would have paid for your consulting services but unfortunately it did not work with my schedule and I had to head off to Australia for work. I would prefer not to use Google, but until someone walks me through each step of setting up and using Outlook to do what I want to do' I may just have to stay with Google.
Sorry about that - I get a lot of comments and try to keep up, but occasionally a few get lost. {I'll write up an article on it.)
I am no longer with the company whose exchange server I was using to sync between my office pc, home laptop and phone. I have outlook 2010 on my home laptop (win 8.1) and a LG G2 running android 4.4.2.
Since I no longer have access to an exchange server (so I think), what would you suggest as the simplest way for a non-IT guy (with an above average grasp of this stuff) to go about syncing his contacts and calendar between a laptop and cell phone?
I see four options and your opinion would be appreciated:
Purchasing Office 365 ($99 for 5 user licenses + cloud storage (1TB each), quite cheap)
Syncing through a linked hotmail/live account.
Syncing through 3rd party software (companionlink).
Stop using Outlook and go with 3rd party app/software.
Thank you!
option 1: purchasing office 365 - not necessary if you're getting the Home version. The business version includes exchange and would solve the problem. (It's as low as 48/yr for 1 mailbox, no office software, around $120 for a mailbox and office software for one user).
options 2, 3, and 4 will all work.
If you use Hotmail for email, then that is probably the best option. If you are looking for a free option, it's also good, but you need to move calendar and contacts into the outlook.com data file. Companionlink will work with your current folders - you can sync to gmail calendar and contacts and gmail can sync with the driod. There are other utilities that will sync with gmail too - like gsyncit.
If you don't need the features Outlook offers, then using something else could be the best option - it really depends on your needs. You need to use what meets your needs the best.