NOTE: One of our readers pointed out that this is a one time shot and does not keep in sync with the public calendar. Keep in mind if any changes are made to your local copy or to the public calendar, these changes will not be reflected.
If you have an Exchange account with your company & are a Mac OS X Snow Leopard user, you are likely to have found the advantages of using Mac Apps (Mail, iCal and Address Book) with exchange delightful. The one down side was not being able to view Public Folder and at least for me, the ability to not view our Corporate Calendar.
Through the use of a Windows PC and full OWA capabilities (only available through IE at the time of this writing, it is coming in Exchange 2010 if your company has already upgraded) you can access your companies Public Calendar.
Once you have logged in to your Exchange OWA account via IE on a windows machine (or Windows VM), you can then go to the bottom left corner and click on public folders. Once you click the plus next to the domains main folder, all of your public folders will appear. Right click your Public Calendar (probably named something else) and then click copy. You will then be presented with a list of place to copy the folder. Copy it to your personal Calendar (Probably just called Calendar) and then wait (you shouldn’t have to wait too long.)
Now, race back to your Mac and open iCal. Assuming your Exchange account is already set up as your Exchange folders refresh you should see your Public Calendar appear. Once it does you can right click and “Get Info” and change the calendars color to your liking. That’s it.
I haven’t experimented with other Public Folders yet, but will in the near future. I will also try to upload a tutorial video, if the above is confusing.
Also know that if you are an iPhone user, this calendar will now show up in your main calendar without the option of turning it off.
