If you use an online calendar, such as Google Calendar or iCloud Calendar, it’s easy to access your calendar from multiple devices. Even if you use multiple calendars, as long as they are all online, they can talk to each other and share events.
It becomes challenging to share events when you use a calendar that is not online, such as the desktop version of Outlook. In offices, Outlook typically runs on a server, as does Outlook as part of Office 365, so the calendar can still be shared, but if you use Outlook at home, the calendar events are not online – they are only on your computer. Similarly, you might have a calendar function on your phone or tablet that only saves the event on that device.
There are programs that you can install on your home computer that will synchronize your Outlook calendar with an online calendar, but a quick and simple solution is to invite yourself to the event.
For example, after creating your event in Outlook, invite yourself. This will send an email with a small attachment. Open the attachment on your phone / tablet / other computer, and that will add the event to that device’s calendar. Similarly, if you create an event on your phone’s offline calendar, invite yourself, pick up the email on your home computer, and that will add the event to your Outlook.
Outlook also gives you the option to email your entire calendar, by date range. So, for example, once a week you can send the next week’s events to your phone.
Inviting yourself to your events, or updating your device calendar periodically, is a little extra work, but might prove an easier solution than adding a synchronization program or converting to online only calendars – or at least a temporary solution.
Tim Covell 