How to View a Shared Calendar in Outlook

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Someone at your workplace or elsewhere has recently shared their Outlook Calendar with you and you now wish to open it. How do you do that?

Sharing Calendars is one of the great features that come with Outlook, and is a reason why it's favoured by businesses around the world. But, if you've never done it before you may not know how to take advantage of this – So, how do you open a shared calendar in Outlook?  

Three ways of viewing other people’s calendars

Basically, there are three ways through which you can view other people’s calendars in Outlook.

1. In the first place, you can view calendars from people who have shared them with you. In that case you will have received an invitation.
2. Secondly, a person can give you an ICS link, allowing you to view their calendar. This link is generated when someone creates an iCalendar, and this link allows whoever has it to be able to open their calendar.
3. Finally, you can also view calendars for people within your own organization. That will be possible if the calendars have been shared with everyone within the company and allows you to see someone's calendar regardless of whether they have chosen to share it directly with you.

How to open a shared calendar in Outlook

There are a few different ways to access a person's calendar depending on how it was shared with you.

Shared Outlook Calendar

1. If a person has shared a Calendar with you, you will have received an email message.
2. Within the message, there will be a link to the Calendar or there will be an Accept button.
3. Click on the link to open the Calendar. You will have the option to configure the calendar.
4. When done, click on Ok and then Yes.
5. The Calendar will now be added to your Outlook. The new Calendar will be listed under Other Calendars.

ICS Calendar Link

1. If you have received an ICS link to a Calendar, you need to copy the link.
2. Next, open Outlook and click on Open Calendar. Choose the 'From internet' option.
3. Paste the link into the box that pops up and click on OK.
4. Click on 'Advanced' to configure your options and then click on Ok then Yes.
5. The new Calendar will now be added to your Outlook under Other Calendars.

Coworkers Calendars

1. What you need to do is to add their Calendars directly to your Calendars’ list.  You will note that Calendars within a company’s Shared Outlook are accessible to everyone by default.
2. You can open them by clicking on Open Calendar in the Home tab.
3. Next, click on Open Shared Calendar. Here, you can search for a Calendar. You can also search for a coworker whose Calendar you wish to add to yours.
4. Click OK and the Calendar will now be opened and listed under Other Calendars.

Why share Outlook calendars?

The method to view shared calendars will depend on how the calendar in question has been shared with you. But why would anyone share their calendar with other people in the first place?

There are many benefits that come from sharing your Calendars with your team. In large organizations, sharing calendars is a good way to improve communication between employees, ensuring that everyone is working within the same timeframes and nobody can fall behind or miss a meeting in their schedule.

It also ensures that your customers are kept happy. If there are delivery deadlines that need to be met, it’s important to ensure that everyone is aware of them. So, a calendar is a good way through which you can organize meetings, deadlines and other events within your organization.

How to share email signatures within your organization

Consistency across email and other online communication is vital, and your email signature is no exception to this. Email signatures are great, but one challenge that you will have as a business is keeping everything uniform. One goal for email signatures is to foster brand awareness, and there are several ways for that to be achieved.

As an example, you may want to use the same colours in your signatures. You may also wish to have everyone in your organization use the same template when creating their own signatures. Uniformity fosters brand awareness – So, how do you achieve this goal?

This is where we come in as Crossware 365. We are one of the most recognizable names in email signature management software across the world. With Crossware, you can centralize management of email signatures within your organization. Each department will have the ability to customise their own template, but within the bounds that you set to ensure your email communications are kept consistent, professional and correctly branded.

If you need a centralized email signature management solution, try out Crossware today. Sign up for the free trial to get going.

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