Privacy-Preserving Calendar Merging Tricks | Entrepreneur

You have a lot going on. You’re figuring out summer vacation plans in January — with your in-laws while scheduling yearly reviews for your team and juggling childcare pickup. Because of this, your digital calendars are likely some of your most-used apps. You may check your various calendars first thing in the morning, anticipating all you must complete that day. And while digital calendars won’t make your to-do list any shorter, they can help you accomplish more.

That said, having multiple calendars can cause more confusion, so many choose to merge them. Merging calendars simply means combining digital calendars from multiple aspects of your life. You may have a shared Apple iCalendar that you share with your spouse for personal appointments. While your friends may all utilize a shared Google Calendar to schedule happy hours and dinners together. At work, you and your colleagues may use Microsoft Outlook for email and calendar purposes. You simplify your life by choosing one centralized platform to house all your calendars.

Combining your personal and professional calendar can help you stay more organized and, therefore, more productive. You’ll spend less time flipping from one calendar to the next and more time checking items off your to-do list. There’s also less chance of missing an appointment or double-booking yourself. After merging, you can also share specific calendars with selective people. Sharing calendars can streamline collaboration and communication efforts while minimizing the chance of rescheduling meetings and events.

Now that you understand why you may want to consider merging and sharing your calendars, it’s important to understand the privacy implications of doing so. Whenever you share your calendar with someone else, you open your life to them. While this is typically fine with a partner or family member, it may not be something you want your colleagues to access.

The bottom line? The more people with access to your calendar, the more likely you’re setting yourself up for a privacy leak.

Yet this shouldn’t deter you. With the right settings in place, you control who sees what on your calendar. Here are some top privacy-preserving calendar merging tricks to keep your information close to the heart.

Opt-in for “Busy” Settings

Your calendar is your personal agenda. Unless you decide to share it with someone, you don’t want anyone to have access to it. And even if you do decide to share your calendar with colleagues, you may not want them to have a voyeuristic view into your entire life. They don’t need to know when your next dental cleaning is or where date night with your husband will be.

Many digital calendars have a free/busy permission setting, letting you control what others can see. Calendar.com offers a “busy” setting to show the time block on your calendar, but it won’t show what the event actually is. Google Calendar users can also enable this free/busy setting by choosing the default visibility setting of your choice. A “private” event will hide all the details, including the title. To make all events on your calendar private, go to the “setting and sharing” section and click “see only free/busy.”

Separate Your Calendars

Another way to maintain some privacy is to share only select calendars with others. While merging everything into one calendar can benefit you, that doesn’t mean you have to share them with everyone. For instance, you may have a family calendar with extended family members to mark down birthdays and help schedule reunions. Having your nephew’s birthday on the same calendar as your work one may be distracting. Creating separate sub-calendars for different parts of your life can be an easy solution.

If you’re a Microsoft Outlook user, go to your desktop’s main “home” tab and hit “add calendar.” A new blank calendar for you to name and edit appropriately will appear. Apple iCalendar users will follow a similar pattern by going to “file” and hitting “new calendar.” After you’ve created and named your new calendar, you can go ahead and share it with whomever you please accordingly.

Transfer Ownership of Calendars

If you’re a leader or manager, you may still be owning some calendars you don’t necessarily need to own. As teams grow and organizational shifts occur, new people step up and into leadership roles. Even if you still need to be in attendance at some meetings, it doesn’t mean you need to have ownership over the team’s main calendar. But instead of deleting the calendar entirely, you can simply transfer ownership to another individual. This is one less calendar that you need to be concerned about from a privacy perspective.

To make a transfer with Google Calendar, go to “my calendars” on the left-hand side of the desktop application. Then, add whoever you want to own the calendar by clicking “options” and “settings and sharing.” You can then “share with specific people” and enter the corresponding email addresses of the person or…