[M Reno]

Using HTC One (m8) on Verizon. Using standard mail app on WP (presumably some mobile version of outlook? Doesn't really give a name). Using Exchange server at office.

I tried using Cortana to set appointment; worked great. Checked on Exchange at office, and it had not synced the appointment. After a little troubleshooting, I realized that WP has it's own default calendar which is NOT synced with Exchange.

So I manually created an appointment, and could go into "MORE DETAILS", and manually choose the sync'ed calendar.

It is going to be a pain if I need to do that for every appointment, and it is unclear how I could even manually choose the calendar if I tried to schedule using Cortana. And of course there does not appear to be any way to edit the calendar once the appointment has been entered and saved.

I'm thinking there must be some way to set the default calendar in WP8.1. Any suggestions?

[Nerdy Woman]

By default, the calendar is associated with your MS ID/Outlook.com account. But if you go in to the calendar, tap the ... at the bottom, and choose settings, you'll see all the calendars that are viewable. If your Exchange calendar is among them, deselect the default calendar and select the Exchange calendar.

When you say Exchange at the office, is this Exchange Active Sync, or an on-premises Exchange Server? The former should automatically sync with Outlook.com, both email and calendar. The latter may require permissions to push updates to your in-house Exchange Server, as it can be blocked by security settings.

Also, for an in-house Exchange server, you may need to add a workplace account (workplace settings are grouped with apps corner and kid's corner in the settings). Be warned. If you do this, you also give administrative authority to your IT department. The phone is treated like company property. They can lock it, wipe it, disable apps or features, and collect personal information...

[M Reno]

Thanks for the information, this certainly helped.

To add to the discussion, I learned that there is not really a "default" calendar. At least there is no action that you take to select a default.

Instead, looks like there is more of a priority list / pecking order, with the phone's calendar being at the top of the list.

When you go into "Settings", it lists a number of calendar features from different apps/accounts. Facebook, My Exchange Account (4 calendars in that account), and Outlook were listed on my. I un-checked the calendar in Outlook (based on the theme color), and then tried to create a new appointment. It now defaults to the first calendar listed in my Exchange account. If I was to want something other than the first calendar in my Exchange Account to be the default, I'm not sure how I'd do it.

Anyway, while I'm not sure exactly how WP is deciding which is the default, at a minimum this really helped to solve my problem. Thanks! :-)

[Nerdy Woman]

The four calendars in your exchange account... is the one that WP treating as default the one created with your exchange account?

I know that with Exchange, you can view calendars shared with you by others, group calendars, SharePoint project site calendars, etc., and you can create additional calendars (when I was in school, I had 6 additional calendars - one for each class), but there is a primary calendar that is basically M Reno mail = M Reno calendar.

[jfa1]

The default calendar is the outlook.com or outlook 2xxx. I use outlook 2007 on my laptop and I use simple calendar on the device (1520) I got used to simple calendar and now with 8.1 you can edit appointments on the device. I have the tock calendar but its not on the start screen I only need to edit settings.