Sync multiple calendars with a Smartphone or PDA
I have 2 calendars in Outlook; one for work/family events, and the other
for school-related events. I'd like to sync both to my Smartphone, but it only syncs the primary calendar.
Is this possible to sync both Calendars between Outlook and my Smartphone?
That would depend on the sync software and which mail account type that you are using. But in most cases; you cannot.
Use a single Calendar with Categories
Instead of using 2 calendars, consider using a single calendar and then use categories and 2 filtered views to show/hide the school/work/family information.
Before merging the 2 calendars, make sure you assign categories to the current items first. You can do this easily by changing your Calendar to a table view like “By Category”. View-> Current View-> Category. Then press CTRL+A to select all your Calendar items and choose Edit-> Categorize and assign (or create) a category for those items.
In our case we assign the category “School” to the items in the secondary calendar and the category “Family” to the items in the first calendar.
Once you’ve assigned the categories, you can drag and drop the messages from the extra calendar to your main calendar to move them.
Filtering the Calendar view
To create a filtered view open the Custom View Organizer;
All Outlook versions except Outlook 2003: View-> Current View-> Define Views…
Outlook 2003: View-> Arrange By-> Current View-> Define Views…
- Press the New… button
- Name the view. The easiest is to name this after the information that this view will apply to. In our case; School
- Select: Day/Week/Month
- Select: All Calendar folders
- Press OK
- Press Filter…
- In the new dialog press the More Choices tab
- Press the Categories…. button
- Select the “School” category
- Press OK until you return to the Custom View Organizer dialog
- Repeat the steps above to create a custom view for the “Family” category as well.
To easily switch between views I would recommend enabling the Advanced toolbar via;
View-> Toolbars-> Advanced
Note: for an overview of available sync software for common mobile devices, see this post.
