How to: share your calendar

The beginning of the year is always the time for setting up a new diary, a new calendar and making sure all your dates are in order.

There are multiple reasons why you might want to share your calendar. This might be your personal/business calendar or it might be a calendar that you have set up for example, for your events etc. You may also want to share a calendar between applications. Most calendar applications support the iCalendar format.

This provides a standard way to allow an application to ‘view’ calendars stored within other applications, which is more convenient than manually maintaining two versions of the same calendar, or switching between multiple apps.

Google Calendar

Google Calendar is used by both individuals and businesses. And what’s not to like? It’s free, simple to use and easy to share. If you want to share a Google calendar with another application just follow these instructions:

1. Log in to your Google account and go to Google Calendar.
2. Click on the Settings menu (cog button) and select Settings.
3. Under Settings for my calendars click on the calendar you want to share.
4. Scroll down to the Integrate section.
5. Select the URL labelled Secret address in iCal format and copy it. This is the link to your Google calendar for use in iCalendar applications

For example, if I am using wordpress for my website and want to link my Google Calendar I can use this to embed my calendar into my website.

Office 365

To share your calendar with users or applications outside your organisation with Office 365 just follow these easy steps:

1. Login to Office 365. Click on the Calendar app
2. Open the Calendar Settings menu (cog button)
3. Click Options (bottom of the menu)
4. Click on the Calendar publishing option (found under Calendar > Shared Calendars)
5. Select the calendar you want to use from the drop-down menu
6. Go to the section called Shows availability, titles and locations
7. Copy the ICS link. This is the link you need to paste into the ics compatible application that you want to share your calendar with