Send a generic calendar event as an iCalendar file.
Tags: email, MS Outlook
Use an iCalendar file to send a generic meeting invite that doesn’t have to show up on your own calendar.
Has someone asked you to create an event for a team that you aren’t a part of? Now you have multiple events on your personal calendar and you’re not sure what meeting you need to attend…
The following steps show you how to create an Internet Calendar (iCal) event which can be emailed to a group of people or made available to be downloaded from a website. The user opens the file and the event is added to their calendar.
- To get started, you’ll need to create the event to share. Open Outlook Calendar, and click New Appointment from the ribbon to begin the appointment creation process.
- Design your appointment as you normally would. Give it a title (subject), location, start and end dates/times. Set a recurrence if needed, and add any agenda or details you’d like.
- Once you have the details filled in, the next step is to send it as an iCal file. From the Appointment group on the ribbon, find the icon that looks like an envelope with a blue arrow on it. Click the down arrow to the right of the icon, and choose Forward as iCalendar.
- This will create an email with the iCal file attached to it. Address your email to the people who need the event. Note: by default, your email address will be in the TO field. If you do not want this event included on your personal calendar, be sure to remove your name before sending.
- After the email is sent, you’ll be back to the Appointment creation window. If you want to save the iCal file so you can send to others later (or include as a download item on a webpage), click File | Save As…
- If you don’t want this item on your own calendar, Delete it. If you do want a copy of it in your own calendar, click Save & Close.
- When recipients receive your email , they’ll need to Open the attachment and click Save & Close to have it added to their Outlook calendar.