Introduction to publishing Internet Calendars

Internet Calendars are calendars that you publish to an Internet site, where others can view it or subscribe to it. Internet Calendars use the iCalendar format and the .ics file name extension.

You can share one-time static calendars, known as Calendar Snapshots, in an email message. Or you can publish calendars to a special web server designed to host calendars in the iCalendar format. The benefit of the latter is that when you change the calendar in Outlook, the changes are synchronized to the web server. This enables those who use an Internet Calendar subscription to see the latest information automatically.

Tip: See Create additional calendars to add new calendars.

Why publish Internet Calendars?

Internet Calendars let you share calendar and availability information with other people. For example, you can publish your soccer team's practice schedule. Each player can subscribe to the published calendar and then see any updates that you make to the calendar. Other people might choose to view the Internet Calendar subscription in a web browser, Outlook, or another application.

How to publish Internet Calendars

• Publish to Outlook.com    You can share your Outlook calendar with others by publishing it on Outlook.com.

To share your Outlook calendar on Outlook.com, first save it as an iCalendar (.ics file), import it into Outlook.com, then share it with the people who need to see it.

Save a calendar as an .ics file by selecting the calendar in Outlook, clicking File > Save Calendar, and choosing the iCalendar Format file type.

Don't have an Outlook.com account? Learn how to create one at Outlook.com.

• Publish to a WebDAV server     If you have access to a web server that supports the World Wide Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) protocol, you can share calendars with other people.

  Not all web servers support WebDAV. Your server administrator or ISP can tell you if WebDAV is supported on the server that you want to use. 

  To publish your calendar to a WebDAV server, in Calendar, in the Navigation Pane, click a calendar. On the Home tab, in the Share group, click Publish Online, and then click Publish to WebDAV Server. Then enter the web address of the server that you want to use. Ask your server administrator or ISP if you don't have this information.