How do I... Publish my Outlook 2007 calendar on the Internet?

Ah ha! This might be what I've been looking for since February when...

It's a long story. My wife got a new phone and realised she could sync with Outlook ("Can I just carry around this phone instead of a filofax?"). This led to a discussion about "the family calendar"... "ZOIKS!" in the words of Scooby Doo. Of course she wasn't interested past the first 10 seconds, but 'I just couldn't let it lie'! Subsequently I spent way too much time experimenting with Outlook 2003 and various calendars and calendar sync programs. The result?

1. Outlook 2003 can't sync/share a live calendar over the internet unless you're using Exchange (don't use this at home folks) Server. There is a publish to a web page feature, but this is static and can only be viewed via a browser.

2. The only option is to sync via a shared calendar like Yahoo or Google. I nearly got this to work using a great little program called SyncMyCal and Google Calendar. It's 90% there... so what happened? Well it comes down to whether you want to share one calendar or have two separate ones, and whether you need to use Categories in Outlook. I'm using a GTD plugin to Outlook called Jello Dashboard which organises tasks, emails etc into groups by using categories. Whilst Google Calendars and Outlook seem to get on famously through their interpreter friend SyncMyCal, there seems to be some misunderstanding over Categories - bit of a touchy subject. Dunno what it is, I can't seem to get them through it and I am fed up with deleting duplicate, triplicate and quadruple calendar entries *sigh*.

3. Outlook lets you compare calendars side by side... gee whiz that's clever, unfortunately it's a terrible way to compare calendars. Anyone who's played calendar screen tennis knows that somehow the brain doesn't seem to want to do it (grrrrrr, I want to throw the mouse at the wall). The Google method of overlaying calendar info is much calmer and easier to understand.

The result? The extra difficulty of syncing through Google, plus the clunky way that Outlook compares calendars has sapped my enthusiasm. So, the calendar project is back on the shelf. We continue using family wall calendar (nice pictures), scraps of paper and the telephone ("sorry was I supposed to be home early tonight?"). I'm sure grown ups handle this fine and all we need to do is learn some basic life skills from our parents. But where's the fun in that with all these crazy technology toys to play with instead?!!

Ah, well there may be hope... I've just read this article: How do I... Publish my Outlook 2007 calendar on the Internet?

It seems that two copies of Outlook 2007 can sidestep their big brother exchange server and talk almost directly to each other via Live.com. Once this has been set up it would appear to keep running without prompting, AND you can now overlay information from two calendars. If this works, it could be a major breakthrough for family calendaring!! Wahoo!! (Sorry it's not that exciting I know).

It seems a bit odd then that this feature hasn't received more of a fanfare... Am I alone in wanting to be able to check the family calendar before I schedule an evening meeting in the pub... in mean... the conference centre. Perhaps Microsoft forgot to tell everyone and family people all over the place are just too busy cleaning up orange juice or poo to give a s**t. Or more worryingly is it another half baked feature that doesn't really work in practice?

Well there's only one way to find out. In the name of family calendaring I shall set out on a new quest to explore this area of Outlook 2007. Type into tasks: Download Outlook demo, Ghost backups of both machines. God I'm sad these days - but wish me luck anyway folks, I shall post here again on my return...