Assigning Free/Busy Permissions

Is it possible to allow colleagues to see the subject and location of any appointment in my calendar, but not to be able to open the meeting request?

Sure, you can allow colleagues to see only limited appointment information, such as Subject and Location (in addition to the time) in newer versions of Outlook and Exchange server.

Your choices will be time only, time, subject, and location, or full details. When you choose time only or include the Subject and Location, the person viewing your calendar will not be able to open the appointments. If you want to allow users to see some information but hide some appointments, mark the appointments you want to hide Private. They will show as Private Appointment.

Outlook's Time, Subject, Location permission:

Free/Busy is set to Time only:

To check or change the Free/Busy permissions in Outlook:

Right click on the calendar folder and choose Properties.
Click the Permissions tab.
Select Default user (at the top) and change the permissions to one of the free/busy options. This gives the selected permissions to all users within your organization that are not listed individually or included in another group that has permission to your calendar.
Select any individuals listed and change the Free/Busy permissions they have as needed.
Click Add to add additional colleagues to the list, or Remove to remove those who have the same permissions as Default.

More Information

As much as is possible, you should use Default permissions or security groups and only list individuals if you need to give them different permissions from everyone else. You want to avoid having a long list of names in the Permissions dialog.

Published November 11, 2015. Last updated on November 11, 2015.