By default, when you try to open a shared calendar, usually you see the other user’s calendar with free/busy details or any other details depending on permissions.
Lately, we discovered this is not the case on Mac. What happens instead, is that you wait for a few minutes to get the following error message even though you were granted permission to the calendar:
“Outlook cannot open the folder. You do not have permission to open this folder. Contact <Calendar owner’s name> for permission.”
Please note this issue does not occur for Office 365 accounts but exchange only.
If you are currently experiencing this issue, worry no more. We’ve found the solution.
What we did?
With Microsoft Office constantly updating their applications we decided to test every version from early 2020, starting with the one from January Ver 16.30.
Sure enough, opening a shared calendar worked with no issues.
We tested all the versions that year to find out which was the rogue version
How to Fix – 2020 Versions for Microsoft Outlook 2019
December 15, 2020 16.44 (20121301) – Doesn’t Work
November 10, 2020 16.43 (20110804) – Doesn’t Work
October 13, 2020 16.42 (20101102) – Doesn’t Work
September 15, 2020 16.41 (20091302) – Doesn’t Work
August 11, 2020 16.40 (20081000) – Doesn’t Work
July 14, 2020 16.39 (20071300) – WORKS
As you can see from the previous information, anything beyond version 16.39, makes the open shared calendar option not work properly on Mac.
Recommended Steps to Un-install and re-install Microsoft Outlook 2019
We recommend installing AppCleaner on your Mac, a free open source software which allows you to thoroughly uninstall an application by just dragging the file.
Once the old version has been completely remove, you can now go ahead and install Microsoft Office 2019 version 16.39
That’s the fix!
We hope this will save you some if you ever encounter this issue.
