A calendar export can reveal much more than event titles: meeting notes, email addresses, locations, dial-in links, attached files and reminders may all be embedded as text. A busy-only sharing copy should be made from a separate export, never by editing the only backup.
Remove descriptions and people, not just titles
Renaming an event Busy while keeping DESCRIPTION, LOCATION, ORGANIZER or ATTENDEE does little to protect the details. Alarms can carry their own descriptions. Custom X-properties can hold provider-specific information. Review nested components as well as the visible event fields.
Keep recurrence relationships intact
A recurring series can use one UID for its master and edited instances. Replacing the UID independently for every row can break that relationship. Our availability tool gives each family a new ID and reuses it for that family’s exceptions. It keeps recurrence and date properties while omitting descriptive content.
The schedule still reveals information
Regular busy periods, dates, duration, transparency, cancellation status and time-zone definitions remain. They can suggest working hours, travel or routines. A busy-only calendar is a detail scrubber, not an anonymity guarantee. Time-zone definitions can also contain provider-specific text, so inspect the resulting file if those fields matter to you.
Check the file and the receiving calendar
Open the new file as text, search for a known private name or email, then import the copy to a temporary calendar and inspect a few repeating and all-day events. Sharing a file creates a snapshot; it does not revoke access to copies someone has already downloaded.
Sources: iCalendar event properties and recurrence identifiers and Microsoft’s distinction between import and subscription.