Having a shared calendar
 

This is just a bit tangential, but I was wondering what you guys would recommend for such a situation since I see some of you have some knowledge on this topic:

I have my Outlook 2003 with a calendar listing all my appointments for the day. Is it possible to share this calendar with my secretary on her computer so she can see what I'm doing at each time of the day? I know that MS Exchange server can accomplish this, but I dont want to invest so much money into this. Is there some simple way for me to share the .pst file one both computers or is there some website that I can save the schedule on and I just synch the 2 computers to it?

Thanks

Yahoo Account?
 

Outlook

If you are on the same LAN you should be able to share your Calendar with your admin by saving it as a web page in a shared folder. You would do this by selecting File | Save As Web Page. There may be other methods, but this should work.

www.plaxo.com

It will sync your calendar, just give your secretary your password so she can see it online ;)

Just don't tell plaxo to try to contact all the people in your address book, it will do it and annoy the hell out of some people

Here's info on how to set up a shared free/busy server:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q291621/

I might be misunderstanding what you want, but can't you just go to Tools - Options - Delegates tab, and add her? At the pointyou add her, you can set up what type of access she has (or not have) to your calendar, inbox, contacts, etc. You can also decide if she can see your meetings/appointments set as private.

BR

That only works if Outlook is connecting to an Exchange Server, as the OP noted, where the Exchange Server keeps track of other users and their permissions. The OP is most likely running Outlook as sort of a stand-alone application, the way you would if you were simply using it to retrieve email from your ISP (e.g. Earthlink, Road Runner, etc.).

Thanks. I knew it had to be more difficult than I was thinking.

BR

No.... it's not.

Go to your calendar options.... you'll see a button at the bottom called "Free/Busy options". Click that. Under the section called "Internet Free/Busy" check the "publish at my location" checkbox. In BOTH of the dialog boxes under that, put in a location that you and your assistant (and/or anyone else) can see... it's a full filename, but for best practice use a replaceable parameter... something like:

\\OfficeServer\SharedOutlookCalendars\%NAME%.vfb

would put your calendar on the shared OfficeServer, in the subdirectory 'SharedOutlookFolders', and call it something like 'beachrunner.vfb' (well... it'd have your name in there). You put the same thing into the second text field as well and that tells outlook where to look for other people's calendars.

Next, go to your assistant's machine and do the same.... then go to anyone else's machine that you want to share free/busy information with (it's a two way street) and do the exact same for all.

Bingo.... you can all see each others free/busy information, and if an appointment is maked "public" you can even see what the title of the appointment is. No exchange server needed. Only caveat is offline (e.g. mobile) users, but synchronized offline files take care of that too.

Cheers,
D.

The above is a very nice work around to having to deal with the headache and expense of setting up an exchange server.

Any new way to share a calendar outside of your domain - ie on the web?
 

Ive been using Yahoo Calendar and syncing with Outlook. But it just isnt cutting it. I load all my flights from AA and UA directly into Outlook and it does them as multi-day appointments (is there a way to prevent this?) and Yahoo doesnt take multiday appointments so basically none of my flight info shows up? Is there a better way to share a calendar on the web? Or get around the multiday problem in Yahoo? Thanks for any info.

I really like Google's calendar: http://www.google.com/calendar/

My wife and I each have a calendar setup, and we can view each others. It works really well if you use gmail email. This might not be the ideal business solution, but it is free and works well. My work has outlook, so if I want to add a work item to my gmail calendar, I just add my gmail address to the invite list.

Thanks. That is a great idea. We have Outlook/Exchange too and I didnt even think of adding the gmail calander address to the invite list, duh ;) But that might do all I need. I really just want her to be able to tell when I will be in town so that if she is getting tickets to something or planning something she will know if I am going to be around. I will definately try this, Google Calendar looked good but I didnt think of this way to keep it current. Thanks again.

Well, using Google Calendar was a good idea, but came up short on execution. It has a really weird error. I load flight info from AA.com to Outlook using .ics files. They go into Outlook fine. But when I send invitations from Outlook to my Google address it things everything from AA is the same. So if I put 6 different itineraries in Outlook and send invitations to Google for each, only the last one is on my Google calendar when it is finished. If I resend one of the other ones, it comes back, deleting the last one. They are all fine in Outlook. Bizarre stuff. Apparently something in the .ics file that Outlook reads to see multiple events, while Google reads it and sees an update to a previous event. All the non-AA things transferred fine. Where is that drawing board........

Have you considered using a hosted MS Exchange service? This will give you all of the benefits of using exchange without the headaches. I use Mi8 (http://www.mi8.com) They are very good but maybe a bit on the expenisve side. If server based spam filtering is not important to you, 1&1 offers cheap exchange hosting (http://www.1and1.com). You can find a listing and ratings of exchange hosting providers at http://www.msexchange.org/services/Exchange-Hosting/