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How to share your Outlook calendar and choose what people can see
Sharing your Outlook calendar lets a colleague, partner or assistant see your appointments without you forwarding every invitation. The part that trips people up is the permission level: it decides whether they see a grey "Busy" block, the title of each appointment, or everything including the notes. This guide covers Outlook on the web and the new Outlook app, which share the same layout.
What you'll need: An outlook.com, hotmail.com or Microsoft 365 work or school account. A desktop or laptop browser, or the new Outlook app for Windows or Mac. The email address of the person you're sharing with.
Open the Calendar
Go to outlook.com (or outlook.office.com for a work or school account) and sign in, or open the new Outlook app. Click the Calendar icon in the bar down the left-hand edge.
Open the sharing settings for your calendar
In the left-hand pane, under My calendars, find the calendar you want to share — usually named Calendar. Right-click it and choose Sharing and permissions.
Enter the person's email address
Type the person's name or email address in the box at the top of the panel. As you type, Outlook suggests matching contacts; click the right one to select it.
Choose how much they can see
A dropdown appears next to their name. Pick one of these:
Can view when I'm busy — they see blocks of time marked Busy, Tentative or Away, with no titles or details.
Can view titles and locations — they see the subject and location of each appointment, but not the notes or attendees.
Can view all details — they see everything in each appointment, but can't change anything.
Can edit — they can add, change and delete appointments on your calendar.
Delegate — everything an editor can do, plus meeting invitations and replies sent to you also go to them, so they can accept or decline on your behalf.
Send the invitation
Click Share. The person now appears in the list in the panel with their permission level beside them, and Outlook emails them a sharing invitation.
Ask them to accept it
The person opens the invitation email in Outlook and clicks Accept. Your calendar then appears in their calendar list under People's calendars, and they can tick or untick it to show or hide it alongside their own.
Change or remove their access later
Right-click your calendar again and choose Sharing and permissions. Each person you've shared with is listed with a dropdown to change their level, and a bin icon next to it to stop sharing with them altogether. Changes take effect without them having to accept anything again.
Variations
A sharing invitation can only be accepted from an outlook.com or Microsoft 365 account. For someone on Gmail, Apple Calendar or anything else, publish the calendar instead: click the gear icon, then Calendar, then Shared calendars. Under Publish a calendar, pick the calendar and a permission level, then click Publish. Outlook gives you two links: send the HTML link to someone who'll view it in a browser, or the ICS link to someone who wants to subscribe from their own calendar app. Published calendars are read-only, and anyone with the link can open them.
On a Microsoft 365 work or school account, the Sharing and permissions panel also lists your organisation as a whole, with its own permission level. This is what colleagues see when they look you up in the scheduling assistant without you sharing anything. Most organisations set it to Can view when I'm busy. You can raise or lower it here, though your IT department may have locked it.
Open the Calendar, then on the Home tab click Share Calendar and pick the calendar. The window that opens lists everyone who has access. Click Add to share with someone new, select their name and choose a permission level from the list below. The names differ slightly from the web version but map to the same five levels.
Troubleshooting
Those two levels are only offered to people in the same Microsoft 365 organisation as you. Anyone outside it, including every personal outlook.com address, can only be given one of the three view-only levels.
Open Sharing and permissions and check the level next to their name — it may still be on Can view when I'm busy. If the level is right but one particular appointment still shows only as a block of time, that appointment is marked Private, which hides its details from everyone except a delegate with private-event access.
Ask them to check their junk folder. If it isn't there, open Sharing and permissions, remove them with the bin icon, and share again — Outlook sends a fresh invitation each time. On a work or school account they can also add your calendar themselves: in their own Calendar, click Add calendar, then Add from directory, and search for your name.
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