Mark all Appointments Private by Default

At work place, usually the calendars are shared publicly by default. So that we can coordinate with people accordingly. But sometimes you sync your professional and personal appointment to a single calendar to manage them easily and to look up for a full schedule in a single calendar. So in order to hide your personal appointments from the shared calendar, set them as "Private".

If you add a new appointment to Outlook calendar, then there is no direct way of marking it as private. But as Outlook can be customized, so you can make changes to default appointment form in order to customize it, in your own way.

• If you are using Outlook 2010 or 2007 then first enable the "Developer tab."
• The developer tab holds multiple options to run, create and edit macros. But by default, this tab is turned off.
• To Enable Developer Tab, the user must follow the below mentioned steps:

For Outlook 2010

• Click File button next to Home tab and select Options.
• After that select the Customize Ribbon section.
• In the right pane, Enable the checkbox with name "Developer".
• Now click Ok to close the dialog box.

For Outlook 2007

• Create a new message.
• Click on Office logo at top left side and select “Editor Options”.
• Under the Popular tab, enable the option “Show Developer tab in Ribbon”.
• Proceed further by clicking OK button.
• After it,  open one New appointment.
• Enable Private option.
• Publish form.

For Outlook 2003 and previous

• Tool >> Form >> Publish Form As

For Outlook 2010 and 2007

• Select developer tab >> Publish >>Publish Form As
• Select Personal Folder Library from Look at drop list.
• Provide a display name and form name for the form and click on publish.
• Now right click on calendar folder and select properties.
• From "When posting to this folder, use:" list choose: form.
• Now personal form library has to be selected.
• After it, select the custom  folder by its display name as was assigned by you earlier.

Now when a New appointment is opened, there will be a by default private button enabled on it. And to disable it, click the button once again.

Alternative Methods

This method is not supported by all versions of Outlook and Exchange versions. There a choice of calendar permission level is given. Either you can set it to "free or busy time, subject, location".

Another option is to separate calendar as Outlook and mobile calendar application can access or subscribe to multiple calendars and viewed them in a combined mode, it would appear as single calendar which ensures you that office members don't have any access to it.