I use Outlook Calendar to organize my schedule, and I’d like to share certain events with other people. How can I send my Outlook Calendar events to my co-workers?
Outlook Calendar lets you share your schedule with others over e-mail, and isn’t just limited to others using Outlook Calendar. By clicking a button, you can send an event invitation to anyone’s e-mail address. That invitation can be understood by a variety of calendar applications, such as Google Calendar.
Sending the Calendar Invitation
Double-click on the item you wish to share, and click on the “Invite Attendees” button. It’s located in the toolbar, at the top of the screen.
Fig. 1 - The “Invite Attendees” button will e-mail an invitation to your calendar event.
After you press the “Invite Attendees” button, a new field labeled “To…” will appear in the window. In this field, type the e-mail address of each person you would like invited to your calendar event. Separate multiple e-mail addresses with a semi-colon (;). When you are done entering e-mail addresses, click the “Send” button in the top left corner of the window. An invitation to your calendar event will appear in the inbox of each person whose address you entered.
A Sample Invitation
Here is a sample of what the invitation looks like to other Outlook 2003 users:
Fig. 2 - A sample event invitation in Outlook 2003
The invitation arrives as an e-mail message, but notice the added calendar buttons across the top of the message. By hitting the “accept” or “decline” buttons, the invitee can decide whether or not to add your event to their calendar.
You’re Not Limited to Outlook
Even though you are using Outlook, you are not limited to Outlook users when adding attendees to your calendar events. Here’s what an Outlook event invitation looks like to a Google Calendar user when it arrives in their GMail inbox:
Fig. 3 - A screenshot of the Outlook Calendar invitation, seen in GMail and Google Calendar.
As you can see, GMail understands the Outlook 2003 calendar invitation format, and allows me to add the event to my Google Calendar. Other platforms that understand Outlook Calendar invitations include Apple Mail/iCal, and Mozilla Thunderbird/Mozilla Lightning (although some report intermittent problems with seeing the invitations).
