SharePoint 2007: Calendar Web Part Limitations (and their workarounds)

Although the Calendar Web Part has improved since the previous version, there are still quite a few limitations in its implementation. After a few days of playing around mostly with Calendar webparts I have found the following problems. Thanks to comments in this post, we now also have workarounds for these problems.

Limitation 1

• If you create a List View of the information in the calendar (e.g. you want to filter / group by a particular category column), you cannot use the Start Time / End Time columns as filters. This means that in this view you cannot have current information, unless you base your filter on the Created column.

• The same goes for the Calendar View, which does not allow you to create a view which is filtered on the Start Time / End Time, though things here are better because you can scroll through the dates using the date scroller available by default.

Workaround 1:

Jared has indicated the following date filtering workaround using this tip: http://blogs.msdn.com/cjohnson/archive/2006/03/16/552314.aspx

Create a custom column was a Yes/No type which e.g. IsExpired. Then create a calculated field with the following formula

=IF([Today]>[End Time])After deleting the Today column.

Then create a filter in the custom view to show only rows with a value of No in IsExpired.

Limitation 2:

In the Calendar View Title, you can only publish the information from one column at a time, and there seems to be no way of providing further item details in the Calendar view (at least with the OOB Calendar).

As can be seen, we can choose just one column, and thus we can have either Title

or Location.

• Web Part Connections are disabled for Calendar Views. You cannot create filters using connections to the Calendar view.
• Although the Calendar can be connected to Outlook 2003, Outlook 2003 is only able to read information from a SharePoint Calendar. For two-way communication you need Outlook 2007.

Workaround 2:

Create a calculated column using whatever combination of the other fields and punctuation you like. e.g. [Title] & " at " & [Location] Then make that calculated column the Month View Title or Week View Title or whatever.