Can I create a private calendar appointment with an iPhone?

Question

I understand that private is an Exchange concept, but I was hoping Apple would have implemented this feature since they are making use of ActiveSync. If the option is available it is certainly not obvious from the calendar creation screen. A bit of cursory searching turned up this whiny Apple forum thread, but alas no solution.

On the iPhone is it possible to create calendar appointments that are marked as private?

Answer 1

Apparently Apple quietly added the ability to mark calendar events as private in iOS 8. At the bottom of the event details there is the option to toggle an event as Private. Setting this toggle works with Exchange.

See screenshots below:

Answer 2

No you can not.

I assume you're using Exchange for you calendar, although you didn't specifically say so.

You can't necessarily create a private event, but you can create a subcalendar in Exchange that you can control the permissions of so that only you can see it. You can do this by:

1. Open Outlook

2. Go to Calendars

3. Right click on your current main calendar and click New Calendar...

4. Create the new calendar under your Exchange account's Calendar section

5. Right click on your new calendar and select Properties.

6. Go to the Permissions tab.

7. Make sure the "Default" user is set to None.

8. Set your own permissions to "Owner" and remove any other users from the list.

This calendar should show up on your iPhone fairly quickly. If it doesn't, try disabling Calendar syncing in Settings → Mail, Contacts, Calendars → Exchange.

Answer 3

I tried it at work. Creating a private calendar subfolder with different permissions works fine. The problem is that other users cannot see my time as blocked, so they might plan an event which overlaps with my private event because they do not know I am not available. You can do it in the native Calendar application on a Mac by simply ticking off the "Private" checkbox, but not on an iPad or iPhone.