Share your Outlook calendar: Your time is my time

There are three different ways in which you can share your Outlook 2010 calendar:

By email

These calendars arrive in your recipient’s Inbox as an email message attachment, with a Calendar Snapshot in the message body. You can edit the Calendar Snapshot before sending; for example, you can change fonts or highlight days or appointments.

Share your calendar by email message

With Exchange Server

You can share your calendar this way only if your recipient has Exchange, too. Your calendars can be viewed only by others to whom you have given special permissions (like how Dorothy and her buddies got in to Oz). If the other person whose Calendar you want to open has not granted you permission to view it, first, Outlook prompts you to ask the person for the permission you need, and second, you shouldn't be trying anyway.

Share your calendar using Exchange

After you access a shared Calendar for the first time, the Calendar is added to the Shared Calendars list in the where you can access it the next time you want to view it.

Open another person's Exchange Calendar

Using Windows Live Hotmail

When I say you can "publish a calendar online" I don't mean taking your Outlook calendar and popping it up on a web site, exactly. Here's something better: When you use the Outlook Hotmail Connector, you may already know that you can view your Windows Live Hotmail email messages in Outlook alongside your other email accounts. You can also view your Hotmail contacts in Outlook (which is always good because you can take advantage of Outlook's strong contact management features).

But equally—if not more—useful is the ability to view calendars from Windows Live Calendar in Outlook, including other people’s calendars that have been shared with you. And just like with contacts, you can use Outlook's advanced time-management features such as viewing multiple calendars at the same time and categorizing your appointments with colors and other useful things. And, any changes you make to your Hotmail calendar in Outlook is automatically synchronized with the Web version of that calendar.

And here's where the sharing part comes in: When you're in your Windows Live calendar, select the calendar you want to share, choose the people you want to share it with, decide their viewing and editing privileges, and send them invitations.

Here's where you can learn how to share your online Hotmail calendar.

And there you have it. Three really simple ways to make your presence (or lack thereof) known.

— Annik