02-02-2004, 11:34 PM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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Outlook Calendar Sharing With PageThink's Calshare
 A long, long time ago, there was a product named Outlook 97. Now, if memory serves, Outlook 97 was the first version of Outlook to support folder sharing. This innovative feature allowed you to specify any Outlook folder (calendar, contact, tasks, etc.) and select another Outlook user that you wanted to share it with. When you made a change to that folder, it would send out a special email that the other Outlook user would recieve, and it would update their folder. Clever stuff! It wasn't perfect, and sometimes things would go wrong, but ultimately it gave people Exchange-like functionality for free. Which is, I believe, why Microsoft removed the feature when they released Outlook XP. :evil: Microsoft wanted to drive Exchange adoption and kill anything that replicated Exchange functionality.
I remember being pretty ticked off at Microsoft when they removed that feature, because I had come to rely on it personally, and had integrated it at the office of the church I attend, all to great effect. But it didn't make any sense to keep an old version of Outlook for one feature when we were upgrading to Office XP. So I abandoned the concept of folder sharing from without Outlook sans Exchange server. But all is not lost! A company named PageThink has come up with an Outlook plugin that replicates this functionality, and best of all, it's free! There's not a lot of details about the type of functionality it offers, or how flexible it is, but it's worth a look.
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02-03-2004, 03:37 AM
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Sage
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 735
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Good find Jason.
I have always wanted to see how people (couples, family, etc) can each maintain their own calendar and yet see everyone elses' without using Exchange.
In Outlook XP, this is not easy as Jason had pointed out. It looks Calshare may have the right idea.
Apple does not make this easy either now that they have adopted XP's multi-user signon. Say my wife and I share the same Mac and have different user names. It is not easy for us to share our calendars either. The solution I found is also similar to Calshare in that we publish our calendar as an .ics file to http://www.icalexchange.com/ and then subscribe to each other's calendar from there. .Mac would work too but that is not free.
I would like to hear how other people are working around this issue.
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02-03-2004, 04:05 AM
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Thinker
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 321
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How is this different from using the microsoft free-busy internet service?
Which, mind you, doesn't ever seem to work right...
Gai-jin
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02-03-2004, 04:18 AM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by gai-jin
How is this different from using the microsoft free-busy internet service?
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I'm not sure, I've never used that. Does it sync with your Pocket PC?
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02-03-2004, 04:26 AM
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Thinker
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 321
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no. does this plug in bring the data into your normal calander, as opposed to just showing you her seperate calander?
Gai-jin
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02-03-2004, 04:59 AM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by gai-jin
no. does this plug in bring the data into your normal calander, as opposed to just showing you her seperate calander?
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I haven't tried it out, but my understanding is that it replicates the functionality I just described in my post. ;-)
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02-03-2004, 02:46 PM
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Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 10,981
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This looks very interesting, however I'm a little concerned about having all my contacts and calander information replicated to a third party server. :worried:
__________________
"I have no special talents, I am only passionately curious" - Albert Einstein |
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02-03-2004, 06:20 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 155
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I too remember the old days of outlook when there was a feature where you can manage multiple inboxes with separate email accounts. I'm pretty sure now it is a feature that is offered through exchange. If you wanted to have multiple inboxes each with it's own email account you basically have to build rules to "sort" the incomming emails based on the recipiant criteria.
My sister still rags me on and on about how I still haven't yet managed to help her with getting that part of the "feature" up and running.
Software is supposed to take steps forward, not back.
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02-03-2004, 10:41 PM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 53
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I registered, then loaded the client for Outlook 2002 and it kept giving me errors 8O
Oh well, has anyone else been able to get it to work? Until the next "solution".
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02-04-2004, 03:37 AM
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Pupil
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 18
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I got it to work without any issues using the COM add-in for Outlook 2003.
I think it would be an ideal solution for one person who wants to keep their Outlook calendars synched between home and work, but for a small office, it's designed more for two people to attend the same mtg, not for two people to be aprised of each other's calendars. The "shared" appointments literally appear as new appointments in the shared user's calendar with no note that this is someone else's appointment. If PageThink gave you the option of directing shared appointments/contacts to a folder other than the main calendar/contacts, that would be much better.
A for effort and ease, but no replacement for the long lost Shared Folders of Outlook 98.
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