How to make sure that your free/busy information is correctly updated in an environment where you use both Outlook and OWA clients

This article discusses how to make sure that the free/busy information for your calendar is accurately displayed both in Microsoft Outlook and in Microsoft Outlook Web Access (OWA).

To make sure that the free/busy information for your calendar appears correctly when you use both Outlook and OWA, you must select the Mailbox - username option in Outlook as the location to deliver new e-mail items. Even if you do not use OWA, you must select this e-mail delivery option to make sure that accurate free/busy information is available to other Outlook users. To view the delivery option in Microsoft Outlook 2002, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
2. If Control Panel is not already in Classic View, click Switch to Classic View.
3. Double-click Mail, and then click E-mail Accounts.
4. Leave the View or change existing e-mail accounts option selected, and then click Next.
5. View the option that is selected in the Deliver new e-mail to the following location list.

The free/busy information that you see when you create a meeting request is published to the Schedule+ Free/Busy Information public folder. Typically, this information is created based on the calendar information of the store (either mailbox store or personal folder [.pst] file) that is selected in the Deliver new e-mail to the following location list in Outlook.

If you select the Mailbox - username option in the Deliver new e-mail to the following location list in Outlook, or if you use OWA, the mailbox-based free/busy information is published in Exchange. If you select the Personal Folders option in the Deliver new e-mail to the following location list in Outlook, the free/busy information from your .pst file is published in Exchange. Additionally, the free/busy information that is published to the Schedule+ Free/Busy Information public folder is updated and overwritten with the last updated calendar information from either the mailbox store or the .pst file.

If you access your mailbox both by using OWA (or Outlook where the mail delivery location is set to Mailbox - username) and by using Outlook where the mail delivery location is set to Personal Folders, your calendar information is saved in two different locations. In this scenario, the calendar information in the mailbox is not synchronized with the calendar information from the .pst file. Your published calendar information may be incorrect, depending on the client program that you last used to connect to the Exchange server.

Because of this behavior, in an environment where both the Outlook client program and the OWA client program are used, Microsoft recommends that you use the Mailbox - username option in the Deliver new e-mail to the following location list for your Microsoft Exchange Server account in Outlook to make sure that the correct free/busy information appears for all users.

Note When you select Personal Folders as the new e-mail delivery location, the free/busy information in Exchange is updated with your mailbox calendar information when you update that information in your mailbox. However, if Mailbox - username is selected as the new e-mail delivery location, the free/busy information in Exchange is not updated with the calendar information from your .pst file when you update that information in your .pst file.