How to view someone else’s calendar in Outlook

How To View Someone’s Calendar In Outlook

10-second overview:

• What are the benefits of viewing other people’s calendars in Outlook?
• How do you setup Outlook shared calendars?
• What are the limitations in Outlook shared calendars?
• How can you overcome Outlook shared calendar limitations?

Why view other people’s Outlook calendars?

Organizing events and scheduling co-workers is 100 percent more efficient when you can quickly see what other people’s schedules are. There are no back-and-forth, unresponsive emails, or questions to be asked.

If you need to arrange a meeting during work hours the fastest way to organize everyone being in the same room (or in the same Zoom) is to check a co-worker’s calendar. Do they have free time and are they available at the same time as you? What about at the same time as three other people who should all be at the same meeting? If your organization uses Outlook and your co-workers share their calendars with each other, then the process of organizing a meeting for everyone at an available time can be very simple.

What we cover in this article

In this article we explain the steps required to see other people’s calendars in Outlook and how to check other people’s calendars in Outlook. Once you have access to a coworker’s calendar then it is very easy to organize a meeting at a time that works for everyone.

How to see other people’s calendars in Outlook

Microsoft Outlook is a highly professional email client available as part of the MS Office package. It is incredibly popular software used by organizations around the world and more often than not the default professional services software that many organization’s use. If you share your Outlook calendar with co-workers it makes it easy to arrange meetings or other events. How To View Someone’s Calendar In Outlook? First of all, select Calendar in Outlook:

• When your calendar opens up choose “Add Calendar” in the Manage Calendar bar
• Choose “From address book” in the drop down box
• You will then see a list of names of co-workers who have elected to share their calendar with you. Alternatively, you can search for a name in the search bar
• Click on the names of the people whose calendar you want to view and press ‘OK’
• Boom! You will now be able to view your calendar and the calendar’s of the people you just clicked on
• Easy!
• To check availability at a specific time select the “Day” view and you will be able to see what times are available during specific days where everyone has open time
• No emails, phone calls, texts or back and forth required!

But, wait. How can I check someone’s calendar in Outlook if it’s not my calendar?

Access to co-workers’ calendars will require them to give you permission to view their calendar for you to be able to make appointments. Some people allow all-access calendars so people can see what they are doing during work hours, while others will require an email notification requesting access to their schedule.

Another optional step in this process is if you receive a mail message that says you have been given delegate access to share a Calendar. Then you can send and accept meeting requests on behalf of the person who has granted you delegate access. To do this, check your permissions folder.

If you want to see someone’s calendar and you don’t have access to it, Outlook will trigger a pop-up asking if you want to send a message requesting access to the calendar. If you click ‘Yes’, Outlook will open a request email message automatically prompting the recipient to share their calendar with you. You can also reciprocate by sharing your calendar with the other person. The person you have shared your calendar with will receive a sharing invitation by email. Once the recipient accepts the invite, they will see your shared calendar in their calendar list.

You can share the level of access you want to give to people which will allow you to retain a level of comfort in what is available in your calendar to be seen by others.

Using Outlook data in other systems

Outlook calendars are a great source for work related data and can be used as a way to add time to timesheets. Adding a meeting to someone’s shared calendars can instantly populate their timesheets.

Now that you know how to view someone’s calendar in Outlook you can now jump into Outlook and schedule multiple meetings for the week with co-workers.

You can share the level of access you want to give to people which will allow you to retain a level of comfort in what is available in your calendar to be seen by others.

Outlook calendars are a great source for efficiency data and can be used as a way to add time to timesheets. Adding a meeting to shared calendars can instantly populate timesheets.

Now that you know how to view someone’s calendar in Outlook you can now jump into Outlook and schedule multiple meetings for the week with co-workers.

Are there limitations in sharing calendars in Outlook?

Okay, so we’ve shown you how to share outlook calendar (s). Yes you can share calendars with others, but Outlook’s shared calendar functionality is limited:

• Shared calendars are limited by the number of calendars you can see and the date range you can view. See how to expand Outlook to see more people over more dates.
• Shared calendars are limited to 5 calendars
• A “scheduling view” is available for more than 5 people, but is limited to 2 days
• The types of appointments is very limited
• There is no reporting
• Color coding is by user, and can clash with shared view coloring
• Shared calendars can work for small teams, but not for larger teams or businesses

In a more extesive article, we delve more into the limitations in Outlook shared calendars and show how you can work around them and how with add on software you can overcome them entirely and create a scalable employee scheduling calendar planning solution for any size of organization. If you can’t wait for the next article and would like to speak to us about how to overcome Outlook limitations ahead of time, contact us using the form below:

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