Opening shared exchange calendars

I'm interested in knowing an answer to this as well.

Bump.

Any input here is appreciated ... even if it's just "not sure", or "you can't do that".

Thanks.

iCal Help seems to indicate that all Calendars you wish to share must be on Exchange 2007. Please let us know if this in consistent with your situation.

Thanks.

Same issue here. Using Exchange 2007, with Microsoft Outlook on a Windows machine I can open the shared calendars fine, but on iCal it says, "No Access" and I cannot display the calendars.

@minuteZero:
Are those shared calendars that you're trying to access (presumably someone else's calendar) on an Exchange 2003 or 2007 mailbox? I think what we're trying to determine here is if a shared calendar from an Exchange 2007 mailbox can be accessed as opposed to one from an Exchange 2003 (or earlier) mailbox.

Thanks.

*BTW - we're just simple end users trying to figure this out. We'd really appreciate an expert's opinion.

Hi mr.e,
These are un-migrated Exchange 2007 accounts. The other user is sharing their calendar via Microsoft Outlook 2007.

I have a funny feeling if I set up her account on my Mac and got her to share it that way it would work. Though it is not a graceful solution it's probably a workaround. Has anyone tried this?

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the client side app (Outlook 2007, 2003, etc.) is pretty inconsequential. iCal is going to be looking at the Exchange server via ActiveSync. Outlook's really just a "view" in to the mailbox on the server. Exchange 2007 is WAY different than Exchange 2003, and Apple has decided to not "mess" with Exchange 2003 interactivity in Snow Leopard's Mail app.

... although the iPhone Mail app will work with ActiveSync/Exchange 2003. Why do they do this to us? LOL

I wondered that myself. The iPhone with push works perfect! Yet I'm having issues with a full-out desktop operating system. Funny how things work.

OK, I'm not sure what changed except that my Exchange server is now running Windows Server 2008 SP2, but one of the group of calendars that I have access to is now available. Sharing for this particular calendar was enabled today, while the others were set up a while ago. If I can figure out how to get another one working I will post here.

I have just confirmed that I can open a shared Exchange 2007 mailbox Calendar in iCal, but I cannot open one shared from an Exchange 2003 mailbox. Our Exch2007 server is also running on a Server 2008 SP2 platform.

Hope this helps. I think we have been able to pretty much narrow things down.

OK, I got it. The shared calendar was setup in Outlook as such:
Default - Reviewer

When set like this everything works fine on my Outlook to view this calendar, but in iCal it shows no access. When the user added my specific user with permissions as reviewer and I reopened the Delegation tab in iCal, it showed that I now have access!

So to recap, at this point, what worked for me is the following:

On the calendar you want to SHARE:
Outlook 2007 -> Calendar, right-click properties, choose Permissions tab, and add the iCal user's Active Directory account with specific permissions (reviewer for example).

On iCal:
Menu Bar -> iCal Preferences -> Accounts icon, click on Delegation tab, under Accounts I can access, + button to add, and enter the user. You should now be able to check the box to left of the user name to display this calendar in iCal.

As stated this seems to ONLY work on Exchange 2007.

Good luck everyone!

I was having some weird behavior with accessing shared calendars within iCal.

I managed to solve it by playing with the server configurations in Address Book & iCal.
Our exchange server had 2 different domain names. There was a "generic" one ("mail") and a machine-specific one (like "server123"). The auto-configuration that SL does set Mail,iCal & Address Book to use the machine-specific one. However, due to certificate issues we changed to the generic "mail". For some reason, iCal then would not find exchange user ids calendars - either to access their calendars or to share mine. By setting both iCal and AddressBook back to the machine-specific host name, this issue was resolved. Very bizarre.

Maybe this will help someone out there - good luck!

Hi Corvi,

I'm having the same problem. As soon as I delete the first Exchange account I created and add a new one to that account things start to act as you describe. I can't add or open delegate calendars or assign rights. iCal just can't seem to find the users anymore. Could you explain in more detail what you did exactly to make this work?

Regards,
S.