First, I searched the forums to avoid a duplicate question–I hope I didn’t run a bad search and miss something.
Here’s what I’m trying to figure out. At my work, we run on Microsoft Exchange (using Outlook as the app). At my wife’s work, they use Google calendars etc. Of course, we both use MacOS, iOS, watchOS on our devices.
Being a family, we have to put things on our work calendars that affect our schedules (doctor appointments, meetings, etc.). Right now, we can’t figure out a way to make sure that stuff put on my calendar (Exchange) will show up on her calendar (Google) and vice versa. I’ve tried sharing my calendar with my wife, but the IT folks have the security settings applied so I can’t share with others outside the organization.
We could, in theory, run two calendars (one work, one shared) but then we run the risk that something will get put on one but not the other. (In my workplace, we have two calendar systems that cannot speak to each other. Drives me nuts when conflicts happen.)
Maybe I’m too far down the rabbit hole to see things clearly and sort them out, so I thought I’d post here in hopes that a fresh set of eyes (or someone who has figured a way out of the rabbit hole) can see something I cannot.
My personal solution to this would be a shared calendar that you both invite to any events which need to be available to the other. So you would create the event on your work calendar, and invite the shared calendar to it, the event would automatically show up on that shared calendar, and if you move it then the shared one will be moved too. The difficulty is remembering to invite the second calendar.
This may well be limited by admin settings made by your IT Dept. My work calendar on Outlook can be synced ONLY with Google calendars. My Google calendar is synced with Calendar.
Sadly, there is backward sync for me – changes made to the Outlook calendar sync to the Google calendar and then the Mac calendar, but the Google calendar does not sync to the Outlook calendar. I am certain this is a choice made by my IT Department. YMMV.
In addition to other replies: it may be not a good idea to share some sensitive company data with google. So a shared calendar is a good solution since it mostly revolves around evening hours and weekends which have nothing to do with work hours.
Thanks, everyone. I’m going to dig further into this approach. The idea had occurred to me, but as I said, I’m so deep into it that I’ve sort of gotten lost among the trees and can’t see the forest.
As many others have recommended, a separate, shared calendar sounds like the way to go. May I suggest, though, that you reverse the order in which events get created: Shared personal events would be created in the shared (personal) calendar first, and as others have suggested, those events could send invitations to your work address so that these personal events appear on your work calendar. Or, you can do as my wife and I have done for years: We share an iCloud Family calendar. I manually add any personal events logged in this calendar (say, “dentist appointment”) to my work Exchange calendar, with the “private” flag set.
I also use Fantastical for Mac, which allows multiple calendar accounts to be set up, including Exchange. Using this app I have “one view” to both work events (Exchange) and personal, shared events (iCloud), since I am not willing to go through the hoops needed to set up our iCloud calendar in Outlook.
Drives me nuts when conflicts happen.)