Can't change default calendar in Outlook 2016

Victek · 01 Dec 2022

I setup Outlook 2016 on a new PC with three email accounts; one is Gmail and the other two are Outlook.com/Exchange accounts. One thing I use the Gmail account for is syncing calendars across my laptop and phone. I can make Gmail the default email account, but I cannot make the Gmail data file the default so that calendar events are automatically created in the Gmail calendar. When I try to change the data file default from one of the Exchange accounts to the Gmail account it says it can't be done when there is more than one Exchange account installed. Does anyone know if there's a workaround for this? As is when I drag & drop an email message on the calendar icon the event is created in one of the Exchange accounts and I then I have to copy it to the Gmail calendar. TIA

Sam Vimes · 02 Dec 2022

I had a similar situation although by default I use the Outlook Calendar but wanted to sync it to the Google Calendar that resides on my smartphone and tablets.

If I added the Google Calendar to Outlook Desktop its read only so I couldn't add anything to it.

In the end I used an Outlook Add-in called Caldavsynchroniser. This allows the Outlook calendar to be synced to the Google Calendar and vice versa. Caldavsynchronizer – Sync Outlook Everywhere

There is a calendar in the Outlook App on my phone but if you add something to the Google Calendar on the phone, the Outlook one doesn't get updated unless you have the Desktop Outlook running. Personally I don't use the Outlook Calendar on my phone, prefering instead the Google one so this isn't a big deal for me.