Connecting SharePoint to Outlook

Quick reference

• 00:04 As we've already seen,
• 00:05 SharePoint is completely integrated with other Microsoft applications.
• 00:09 And one of the applications that it's integrated with that we haven't really
• 00:13 explored in great detail yet is Microsoft Outlook.
• 00:16 So it's very possible for us to take a list in SharePoint and
• 00:20 integrate it into our Outlook account.
• 00:22 For example, Outlook as we all know as Outlook users,
• 00:27 contains an inbox for our email.
• 00:30 It contains a calendar for our meetings and our events.
• 00:35 It contains a task list and we also have access to our contacts.
• 00:39 Now I have similar things within SharePoint.
• 00:42 For example, in my SharePoint site, I have a calendar, and
• 00:46 it's this one just here, the event calendar.
• 00:49 Now the difference between this calendar and my calendar in Outlook is that the one
• 00:54 in Outlook is personal to me, whereas this calendar is shared amongst my team.
• 00:59 But it might be that within this shared calendar,
• 01:02 I do also have some things that are relevant just to me and vice versa.
• 01:06 So instead of having to refer to two different calendars every single day to
• 01:11 keep on top of my events and my meetings, I can integrate my SharePoint calendar
• 01:16 into my Outlook calendar, which makes it a lot easier to manage my appointments.
• 01:22 So what I need to do here is I need to create a connection between my SharePoint
• 01:26 calendar and my Outlook calendar.
• 01:28 And this is very simple to do.
• 01:30 All we need to do is go on to the Calendar tab so we get our ribbon drop down, and
• 01:35 you'll notice that we have a group called Connect & Export.
• 01:40 And the big button that we have in here is Connect to Outlook.
• 01:45 And you can see here the screen tip is telling me synchronize items and
• 01:49 make them available offline using Microsoft Outlook.
• 01:53 So let's click this button.
• 01:55 You're going to get a message that says that SharePoint is trying to
• 01:57 access Outlook.
• 01:58 So I'm going to say that's fine.
• 02:00 Let's open it.
• 02:01 It jumps me across to Outlook.
• 02:04 And then it asked me if I'd like to connect my SharePoint Calendar to Outlook.
• 02:07 So I'm going to say Yes.
• 02:10 Now what you'll notice here is that it's jumping across to my Outlook calendar and
• 02:14 I now can see the two calendars next to each other.
• 02:17 So on the left hand side I have my personal Outlook calendar and
• 02:21 on the right hand side I have the calendar from SharePoint.
• 02:25 And if I take a look on the left hand side just underneath where we have our months
• 02:29 displayed, you can see it says My Calendars, and
• 02:32 it's showing that I have my calendar selected.
• 02:34 And then also underneath it says Other Calendars and
• 02:37 this is where you'll find your SharePoint calendar.
• 02:41 Now this differs very slightly from the last lesson when we looked at
• 02:45 exporting lists out into Excel.
• 02:48 If you remember, I mentioned that that is just a one way connection.
• 02:53 Now the difference here with calendars is that this is a two way connection.
• 02:58 So if I add an event into my SharePoint calendar from within Outlook,
• 03:02 that's going to update in SharePoint and vice versa.
• 03:07 If I add something in SharePoint, that's going to update in Outlook as well.
• 03:12 I'm going to do that in a moment just to really illustrate that point.
• 03:16 But another little tip and
• 03:17 trick when it comes to using Outlook is if you don't necessarily want to see your,
• 03:22 calendars separately or side by side as they are now.
• 03:26 You could choose to overlay your SharePoint calendar with your personal
• 03:30 calendar.
• 03:31 So you can see basically everything in one calendar.
• 03:35 And the simplest way to do that is to go up to where we have Microsoft
• 03:39 365 Rollout Event Calendar, the title, and click this arrow.
• 03:44 And you'll see as I hover over it says view in overlay mode.
• 03:48 And when I do that, it's basically going to merge the two calendars together
• 03:53 so I can see my personal items and my team items all in one calendar.
• 03:58 So that's a really nice little trick.
• 04:01 Let's finish off this lesson by adding in another calendar item and
• 04:04 making sure that that updates.
• 04:06 So if I go to my team calendar, let's add something in for next Monday.
• 04:12 I'm going to double click and I'm going to say that we have a Team B meeting.
• 04:15 And this is going to be from 10AM to 11AM, save and close.
• 04:23 So I've added that item in on the 26th of July.
• 04:27 Let's jump back to SharePoint and see if that's updated.
• 04:30 Now I can see immediately that it hasn't, but
• 04:33 what you might find is that you have to refresh the page.
• 04:36 So I'm going to refresh my browser and there we go.
• 04:40 It has appeared on Monday the 26th of July.
• 04:44 If I was to add a new meeting or appointment into here,
• 04:47 it's going to update in my Outlook calendar.
• 04:49 So very simple to set up a connection between SharePoint and Outlook.

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