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When you add a new appointment to your Outlook calendar, it is not marked private by default. To have your appointments marked private by default, you can change the appointment form by selecting the Private check box.

1. On the Tools menu, point to Form, and then click Design a Form.

   

2. Select Appointment, and then click Open.
3. At the bottom of the window, select the Private check box.
4. On the Standard toolbar, click Publish Form .
5. In the Display name text box, type a name that you can easily recognize as your new appointment form, and then click Publish.
6. Close the appointment design form, but do not save changes to the form.
7. On the Go menu, click Folder List.
8. In the Navigation Pane (Navigation Pane: The column on the left side of the Outlook window that includes panes such as Shortcuts or Mail and the shortcuts or folders within each pane. Click a folder to show the items in the folder.), right-click the Calendar folder, and then click Properties.
9. In the When posting to this folder, use list, select the name of the form that you designed in step 5, and then click OK.

Important  You should not rely on the Private feature to prevent other people from accessing the details of an appointment, contact, or task. To ensure that other people cannot read the items you marked as private, do not grant them Read permission to your Calendar, Contacts, or Tasks folder. A person who is granted Read permission to access your folders could use programmatic methods or other e-mail applications to view details in a private item. Use the Private feature only when you share folders with people whom you trust.

A better way to keep individual appointments private is to create them on a separate additional calendar. Additional calendars cannot be shared.

Note  Meeting requests that you send are not automatically marked as private.