Shared Calendars added to Outlook 2016 not synced to Outlook on Mac

[Bryan Schmiedeler]

We have a small number of Mac users (including myself) and are having an issue with Shared Group Calendars. 

I have created some Calendars in Outlook and then instructed users to go to the Calendar and click the Connect to Outlook button and then accept the calendar. 

This works fine for Windows users (which I am as well) but the button is greyed out on the Mac. I kind of assumed that the calendar would be synced to my Mail Account on any other platform.  So I added the calendar to Outlook in Windows, BUT it doesn't appear on the Mac App, Email on the Web, or the mobile client.

This is not good. What if a user gets a new computer and has to install Outlook on that computer. Will he or she have to add the calendar again?

Before I roll out anymore of these I want determine what is going on.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Bryan S

[#2]

Is there any update on a timeline for shared calendars? This appears to be an issue that first appeared on this thread in February.

We have a 2 schools full of teachers who have transitioned to office 2016 for Mac and would like to be able to view shared folders in the Outlook App. 

[#3]

Hi, We're getting very close to releasing the Mac improvements! We hope to be rolling out to Insider Fast builds sometime in September or October. I'll ping back on this forum when that rollout begins.

[#4]

Hi Julia,

Do let us know please, this is driving us insane at UWC Dilijan. To be honest, the lack of interoperability of Outlook calendars is a serious drawback in an educational setting.

With many thanks,

Gabriel

[#5]

Hi all,

We're excited to announce that as of this morning, 100% of Office 365 users on Insiders Fast will have the shared calendar improvements. If you want to join Insiders Fast, you can follow the instructions here.

This is a big update that represents a major milestone for shared calendars in Outlook for Mac.

Below I've highlighted the ways it's improved for Outlook users:

• Simple, consistent sharing: You can now share your calendar from any Outlook client (Windows, Mac, Web, iOS, Android), and there's a simple set of calendar sharing permissions that are consistent across all Outlook clients. The invites that are sent out are the same format, no matter which client you send from as they are now generated by the Office 365 service rather than the clients themselves.
• Easy to accept: All Outlook clients also have an easy "Accept" button when you receive a calendar sharing invitation. This is a brand new feature for Mac!
• Shared calendars roam to every app: You will see the same calendars across all Outlooks as well. In the past, Mac was reading shared calendars from a local store rather than from the service, and with this update, Mac shows the same sahred calendars as you see in other Outlook applications.
• Free/busy in Mac: In the past, you were not able to view shared calendars unless you had full read permissions. With this update, you can open & view calendars where you have only free/busy permissions. It doesn't matter if you've been explicitly shared the calendars, or you are opening the calendar of another user in your organization where you have permissions via the default organization permissions.
• Secondary calendar sharing in Mac: As you were probably aware, in order to share a secondary calendar from Mac, you also had to share your primary calendar. This is also fixed with this update - you can share any calendar regardless of permissions on other calendars in your mailbox.

In addition to all the calendar sharing improvements above, there is some additional calendar goodness in this Mac update: such as the ability to add inline attachments to a calendar invite, create Teams meetings, or choose to prevent forwarding a meeting invite (already released in Windows & Web).

Feel free to direct-message me with any feedback!

--Julia

[#6]

Good afternoon Julia,

When will these updates be available for those on the slow track?

Thank you!

Ryan

[#7]

Hi Ryan,
It is released to 100% of Insiders Slow, starting in build 16.20.181202.

[#8]

Thanks, Julia, I am part of a large organization which just switched to 365 but we are also using the Outlook desktop client for Mac. I doubt we'll get approved to join the Insiders program. Any idea of a timeline for release to general public?

[#9]

Hi, the rollout to production will be starting next week! We'll start with a small percentage and then keep increasing.

[#10]

Do the calendar sharing updates require updates/changes on the Exchange server? I'm using Outlook 16.22 (190101) and anything I can find related to shared calendars looks the same as it always has.

[#11]

Hi Kyler, we're still at a small percentage of users right now, so that's why you don't see changes yet. We'll keep slowly increasing the rollout over the next month.

[#12]

Hi Julia,

the lack of possibility of adding shared calendars with permissions free/busy (the standard for our enterprise) is quite a big issue.

I need to check availability of a large number of people across a large number of business units, and need to use the web version the whole time, as I can't add calendars in the mac version.

Asking for permission to see more details of their calendar to each single person is not feasible.

When's this issue planned to be resolved?

Cheers,

Mat

[#13]

Ok, I missed the last few posts. Apparently 16.20 has the changes already, but I'm on 16.21 and can't see them? Is that the same issue as @KYLER_GLAZE has? So they'll show up in a months time max?

[#14]

Hi there, the changes are behind a flight, so even after updating the client you might not be upgraded. We are going to expand more in February, as we found a small bug related to add-ins that we want to fix before continuing to expand.

If you want the changes more immediately in the meantime, you can opt in to the Insiders Fast or Insiders Slow ring, which has the changes available to all users.

[#15]

Hi Julia,

I've now opted in for Insider Fast and upgraded to 16.22 (190127). Still no sync or chance of opening shared calendars which have Free/Busy permissions only. :(

Are you sure you fixed this?

Cheers,

Mat

[#16]

This worked for us. Thanks!

[#17]

The rollout is to about 70% of all production builds, so many of you should have the improvements by now. We'll post again when it's available to 100% of users!

[#18]

I did a manual update to version Version 16.23.0 (19030902). Outlook is finally syncing the shared folders. Great job, thanks!

@Julia Foran 

[#19]

@Julia Foran 

(version 16.23.1 Outook for Mac)

My "Open Shared Calendar" continutes to be greyed-out and when I've gone into my Preferences, I don't have the option to "Group similar folders, such as Inboxes, from different accounts" as instructed here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3007307/you-cannot-open-a-shared-calendar-in-outlook-2016-f...

Help! 

Thanks in advance