SharePoint calendars can be viewed and edited from within Outlook by creating a connection. Anyone with permission to view the calendar should be able to sync it with Outlook.

• After selecting your calendar, click the “Connect to Outlook” button in the Calendar tab.
• Click “Allow” and “Yes” on the warning popups, and the SharePoint calendar will appear in the list of calendars in Outlook.

You can then overlay the calendar with your personal calendar and make changes to the SharePoint calendar without ever opening SharePoint in your browser.

Caveats to syncing SharePoint Calendars in Outlook

• If the connect to Outlook button is grayed out, refresh your page with F5 and try again. Chances are it will be available. The distributed cache services can cause a problem where it is grayed out, but refreshing fixes the problem.
• You cannot connect a custom view of the calendar with Outlook or show some of the events but not others based on metadata. Either the entire calendar is visible or none of it is.
• ***Events for which a user doesn’t have permissions to view will not by synchronized.***
• If you open Outlook while out of the office or offline and have already connected it to SharePoint, you will be prompted for your SharePoint password or Outlook will tell you that you are offline and that the calendar is unavailable. This won’t disable Outlook, but an extra error can be annoying.
• Outlook 2007, 2010, and 2013 can all be synced with SharePoint 2007, 2010, or 2013 in any level of licensing (foundations, standard, or enterprise). The version of Exchange, or whether you are using Exchange at all, does not limit this functionality.
• Events that span multiple days, as in Gantt chart type events, do not look good in Outlook.
• Only the Calendar view of a calendar can by synced with Outlook. Datasheet and Standard views turn calendars into lists, and those lists cannot be synced.

Copy SharePoint Events to your Outlook Calendar

If you would like to have a copy of the event in your personal calendar, open the event and click Copy to my Calendar. If the event is updated or changed, the copy of the event will not reflect those changes.