How to add and view shared calendar in Outlook

Add calendar shared within organization

When a calendar is shared within the same organization, it can be added to Outlook with a single click. Simply open the sharing invitation that your colleague sent to you and click the Accept button at the top.

The calendar will appear in your Outlook under Shared Calendars:

View calendar shared outside organization

The process of accepting a calendar sharing invitation by an external person is a bit different, but still very much straightforward in case you use Outlook for Office 365 or has an Outlook.com account.

1. In the sharing invitation, click Accept and view calendar.
   
2. You will be taken to either Outlook on the web or Outlook.com and, possibly, asked to log into your account. Once you do that, you will see the Calendar subscription details. If needed, copy the link to the calendar for future use, and then click the Save button.
   

The shared calendar will appear under Other calendars in Outlook.com as shown in the below screenshot, or under People's calendars in Outlook on the web. In desktop Outlook, you can find it under Shared calendars.

Open shared calendar of a coworker without invitation

To view a calendar that belongs to someone in your company, you do not actually need an invitation as the view level of access is given to all internal users by default (though, it can be changed by your administrator or IT persons).

Here are the steps to add a shared calendar to Outlook:

1. From your Calendar folder, go to the Home tab > Manage Calendars group, and click Add Calendar > Open Shared Calendar.
   
2. In the small dialog window that opens, click Name…
   
3. In the displayed list, find the user whose calendar you wish to add, select their name, and click OK.
   
4. If you've selected a valid person, his or her name will appear in the Name box, and you click OK.
   

That's it! The calendar of your colleague is added to your Outlook under Shared Calendars:

Add an Internet calendar to Outlook

If you have an ICS link to a calendar that someone else shares publicly, you can subscribe to that public calendar to view it in your Outlook and receive all updates automatically. Here's how:

1. Open your Outlook calendar.
2. On the Home tab, in the Manage Calendars group, and click Add Calendar > From Internet…
   
3. In the New Internet Calendar Subscription dialog box, paste the iCalendar link that ends in .ics:
   
4. Outlook will ask you to confirm that you want to add this Internet Calendar and subscribe to updates. Click Yes to import the calendar with the default settings, which work just fine for the most part, or click Advanced to configure custom settings:
   

   In a moment, the Internet calendar will appear under Other Calendars in your Outlook:
   

Import iCalendar file to Outlook

In some situations, you may want to import events from your other calendar into Outlook to spare the trouble of re-creating all your appointments from scratch. Instead, you export the calendar from another app (say, Google calendar) or another Outlook account as an ICS file, and then import that file into Outlook.

To import an iCal file into Outlook 2019, Outlook 2016 or Outlook 2013, this is what you need to do:

1. Open your Calendar.
2. Click File > Open & Export > Import/Export.
   
3. In the Import and Export Wizard that appears, select Import an iCalendar (.ics) or vCalendar file (.vcs) and click Next.
   
4. Browse for the iCalendar file (it should end with the .ics extension) and click OK.
   
5. Based on your needs, choose one of these options:
   • Open as New – to add a new calendar to your Outlook.
   • Import – to import the items from the iCal file into your primary Outlook calendar.

   

Go to your Outlook calendar and, depending on your selection in the last step, you will find either a new calendar under Other calendars or all events from the .ics file imported into your existing calendar.