Can I synchronize my Outlook calendar with my iPhone or Android device?

The Microsoft Outlook software program on a computer can create calendars as well as handling mail. It allows you to schedule events and invite people to attend, and then keeps track of all those details.

We’re occasionally asked if it’s possible to keep the Outlook calendar in sync with the calendar on a phone, such as the Apple iCloud calendar (built into a Mac or iPhone), the built-in calendar on an Android phone, or the mobile Outlook app running on a phone. Unfortunately that isn’t possible using our email service, which doesn’t involve calendars at all.

Synchronizing an Outlook calendar with another device is possible if both Outlook and the other device connect to a central calendar server, called a “Microsoft Exchange server”. An Exchange server acts as the “middleman” that stores your calendar data, and both the Outlook program and the other device “talk to” it to keep things in sync.

Unfortunately, we don’t offer Exchange Servers with a calendar function, so you’d need to use a different company to be able to do this. (The technical reason is that Exchange servers require that the hosting company use Windows servers — but like most hosting companies, we only use Linux servers.)

Companies that do offer Exchange servers usually bundle both email and calendar features into one package, even though they’re two separate things. An Internet search for “Exchange server” should show several possibilities, including Microsoft’s own Office 365 service. If you want, it’s possible to use one of these companies for your email and calendars while keeping your website with our company.

Finally, we should mention that if you don’t want to use an Exchange server, there are third-party software programs that claim to sync Outlook calendars with a Mac or sync Outlook calendars with an Android phone, but we haven’t tested them ourselves.