My boss wants it to be 5 years from now

January 27, 2012 1:19 PM

Boss wants me to access his outlook to add dates to calender from another computer. Is this possible without buying anything or knowing how to program anything? If we have to buy something, what is the cheapest, best program to buy? Can He use his computer while I am using the program?

He is using Windows 7, my pc at work is Windows 10 and I have a mac at home. We would like to be able for me to work from both the mac and the pc.

posted by myselfasme to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

You can sync his Outlook calendar to a Google calendar (assuming that there is nothing on there that he wouldn't want on Google's servers), using Google Calendar Sync.

With this, any items added to the Outlook calendar will sync up to the Google calendar and vice versa. I use this at work and it is quite handy, because it allows my teammates to see what my schedule looks like (we work remotely).

This way, you won't need to somehow access his Outlook from another computer, you'll just need to access the Google calendar, which you can obviously do from anywhere as long as you've got an Internet connection.
posted by asnider at 1:22 PM on January 27, 2012

The calendar sync app will need to be installed on his computer, BTW. You shouldn't need to install anything on either of your computers, since you'll just be accessing the Google calendar.
posted by asnider at 1:24 PM on January 27, 2012

LogMeIn is also an option. The free version allows you to remotely access any computer.
posted by KokuRyu at 1:26 PM on January 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

Pretty much what asnider said.

If you, however, need an alternative check out applications such as TeamViewer or LogMeIn that give you total access to the other computer. Obviously this has privacy concerns and your boss won't be able to use his computer for other stuff AND will be able to see what you're doing.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 1:27 PM on January 27, 2012

Microsoft's suggestions.
posted by epo at 1:31 PM on January 27, 2012

Your boss will need to add you as a delegate to his calendar, which will give you the ability to open his calendar on your machine and add items. The location of the delegate options are dependent on the version of outlook you're running.

Once this is set up, you'll be able to access his calendar anywhere you can access yours-- so it will still work if you use webmail at home on your mac.
posted by veryhappyheidi at 1:35 PM on January 27, 2012 [4 favorites]

Ah, yes, Outlook's "delegate" option is probably your best bet. It's been a coupla years now since I last used Microsoft productivity software.
posted by KokuRyu at 2:17 PM on January 27, 2012

We add stuff to each other's calendars all day at my job. You just both need Outlook of some modern version (2003, 2007, 2010) and for him to grant the appropriate delegation rights to you.

However, if you need to do this from home sometimes, I would suggest putting LogMeIn or something on your work computer so you can remotely access it and use your Outlook on your desktop.
posted by Lyn Never at 3:52 PM on January 27, 2012

Yeah, absolutely the outlook delegation thing. used to do this all the time when i was a secretary. had access to boss's calendar and email etc. if i recall, he can limit what you can do as a delegate (reply to email, update calendar, etc)
posted by misanthropicsarah at 10:33 PM on January 27, 2012

Fairly sure the Outlook delegation feature may be dependant on using Exchange as the back-end server for email.

If you do not have Exchange, the Google Calendar idea is not bad - I've used that as a workaround in locked-down client environments in the past!
posted by jkaczor at 7:48 PM on January 29, 2012 [1 favorite]