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Renaming the Default Office 365 Calendar and Tasks for IOS
This particular issue is one that’s been sitting in the background for ages and I’ve never got around to looking at until this week. That’s because it doesn’t stop me working – it’s just an annoyance and it was a thread that was pulling slowly but surely for – well, since I took out an Office 365 Subscription six months ago.
When I open up my Calendars on any of my Apple devices, I see a range. I see my Health Calendar, my Family Time Calendar, my Social Calendar, my Writing Calendar all fine. These are all calendars stored in iCloud and I can rename them as and when I like.
However, because I have my email hosted by Office 365, my meetings are generally sent to my Office 365 calendar which is called – wait for it, this is ingenious creativity from Microsoft’s part. Calendar. Yup, Calendar. And can you rename this massively descriptive title? Nope. It’s called Calendar.
That really doesn’t fit in with my workflow and way of life, so I decided enough was enough and I wanted it renamed. Same principle with the Tasks which are called (yes, you’re on my wave length now) … Tasks.
Long story short, here is the fix. Despite Microsoft’s protestations that it can’t be done, here is the way to do it.
Ensure you have:
– A Windows 7 or higher machine. I used a Windows 8.1 VM running on VMWare Fusion.
– Outlook 2010/2013
– A MAPI utility called MFCMAPI
1) Download the MFCMAPI utility and run it. You will need to log into your Office 365 account on there. Click Sessions and Log On to do this.
2) Double click on your mailbox entry in the top pane.
3) From the resulting Window, click on the drop down dot to the left of Root Mailbox and select IPM_SUBTREE. You will see a list of your mailbox components and, an entry for Calendar and Tasks.
4) Click on them to Rename them. You’ll see that mine are now called Soliam 365 Calendar and Soliam 365 Tasks. Then exit the application.
5) Sit back, pour yourself a drink and wait for everything to sync. Then give yourself a well deserved pat on the back.
For more iOS and OS X hints and tips, particularly on the subject of productivity, be sure to visit me at www.soliamsays.com
Author
Lee Garrett