Practice Tip: Managing Your Outlook Calendar

Calendar Organization Tips and Tools

• Create multiple calendars. Your main calendar can be a business calendar, but you can create additional calendars to organize other areas of your life; ie, a family calendar, your supervisor's calendar. As of Outlook 2003, you can now view multiple calendars side by side, making it even easier to view and maintain separate calendars. One important item to note is that the additional calendars will appear as subfolders to your main calendar. Reminders and meeting updates or cancellations will only be received on items in the main calendar. (The way around this obstacle is to copy events that you need to receive a reminder on from the other calendars into your default calendar.)
• Color code items on your calendar by labeling the items. Outlook comes with 10 predefined color coded labels. You can use them as is, or edit the label names for each of the colors provided. For example, you can color code all “important” appointments or meetings with the color red to make them stand out in your calendar. You can also edit the label of the color red from “important” to “urgent”.
• Apply categories. You can apply categories to your calendar items (this will allow you to sort by categories in Views). Some of the categories that Outlook provides are: Business, Competition, Favorites, Holiday, Gifts, Goals/Objectives, Ideas. You also have the ability to create your own categories.
• Changing calendar Views allows you to see calendar items differently. You can sort by the standard Day/Week/Month type formats, but you can also view items sorted by categories (Remember those categories that I mentioned above?); view by active appointments; recurring appointments; annual appointments. By using Views, you can sort and see only those calendar items that fit your view criteria.
• Holidays. No more guessing which day of the week Fourth of July falls on this year. You can add holidays (for our country and a number of others) into your calendar by selecting them from the Add Holiday button located on the Options, Tools, Options, Calendar Options dialogue.

Tips for Proper Handling of Meeting Requests

• Always deal with the requests and meeting updates directly from your Inbox. When a meeting invitation comes into your Inbox, deal with it right away. Accept, accept as tentative or decline each request immediately. This prevents the meeting request from getting lost and assures it is properly entered into your calendar. It also lets the meeting organizer know whether or not you will attend or if there are scheduling problems. Never delete meeting requests that you must reject, instead Deny the request.
• If you would like additional people to attend, ask the meeting organizer to add that person to the attendee list. Never forward a meeting request to additional people. Doing so will prevent them from receiving meeting updates from the organizer. On the other hand, if you are the meeting organizer you may invite additional people by adding them to the attendee list or the original meeting. Updates from this point forward to be distributed to all attendees, including the new add-ons.
• Reminders. Make sure you setup reminders for your appointments and meetings. (Don't forget that reminders will only work for the main calendar.) You can set the reminder when you originally create appointments or accept meeting requests. You can use the Reminder feature to set up reminders that automatically prompt you at any interval that you specify before a designated event takes place.
• Convert personal appointments to meetings by opening the appointment and clicking on the Invite Attendees button. This will allow you to add names to the “To:” field and invite others to attend the event.
• Received an e-mail message about an event that you would like to attend and would now like to save as a meeting? Drag the message from your mailbox directly to your calendar. Fill in the appropriate date and time information and save the message as an appointment or even invite others to attend and now you have a meeting.
• Don't have time to manage your calendar? Going on vacation and would like to have your appointments and meetings managed while you're away? Then you can share your calendar and grant delegate access (this feature requires you to be using a Microsoft Exchange Server e-mail account). When you share your calendar, it allows others to see your availability without affecting their own calendar. When you delegate authority, they can accept or deny meetings on your behalf and the meeting originator will always know that who accepted directly, and who accepted as a delegate. Outlook makes it simple.
• Manage and schedule company resources such as equipment and conference rooms (this feature requires you to be using a Microsoft Exchange Server e-mail account). In order to schedule the resource, the resource must have its own mailbox on your Exchange server. Once the mailbox has been setup and permission has been given to others to schedule the resource, the resource can accept and reject invitations automatically. When someone wants to schedule the resource, it is invited to a meeting. The invitation is accepted if the resource is free, and the meeting is automatically entered in the resource's calendar.

By following the guidelines above, your calendar will be organized, accurate and an effective tool in the battle against disorganization.

We live such busy and hectic lives. Not only do we have to juggle our own schedule, but we are also often juggling the schedules of others. Proper use of a good calendar program can make all the difference in the world between making appointments on time and showing up late, or even worse, missing them altogether. Microsoft Outlook provides the tools needed to help manage and organize your schedule. So let's look at some of the ways Outlook can bring order to our hectic lives.

Calendar Organization Tips and Tools

• Create multiple calendars. Your main calendar can be a business calendar, but you can create additional calendars to organize other areas of your life; ie, a family calendar, your supervisor's calendar. As of Outlook 2003, you can now view multiple calendars side by side, making it even easier to view and maintain separate calendars. One important item to note is that the additional calendars will appear as subfolders to your main calendar. Reminders and meeting updates or cancellations will only be received on items in the main calendar. (The way around this obstacle is to copy events that you need to receive a reminder on from the other calendars into your default calendar.)
• Color code items on your calendar by labeling the items. Outlook comes with 10 predefined color coded labels. You can use them as is, or edit the label names for each of the colors provided. For example, you can color code all “important” appointments or meetings with the color red to make them stand out in your calendar. You can also edit the label of the color red from “important” to “urgent”.
• Apply categories. You can apply categories to your calendar items (this will allow you to sort by categories in Views). Some of the categories that Outlook provides are: Business, Competition, Favorites, Holiday, Gifts, Goals/Objectives, Ideas. You also have the ability to create your own categories.
• Changing calendar Views allows you to see calendar items differently. You can sort by the standard Day/Week/Month type formats, but you can also view items sorted by categories (Remember those categories that I mentioned above?); view by active appointments; recurring appointments; annual appointments. By using Views, you can sort and see only those calendar items that fit your view criteria.
• Holidays. No more guessing which day of the week Fourth of July falls on this year. You can add holidays (for our country and a number of others) into your calendar by selecting them from the Add Holiday button located on the Options, Tools, Options, Calendar Options dialogue.

Tips for Proper Handling of Meeting Requests

• Always deal with the requests and meeting updates directly from your Inbox. When a meeting invitation comes into your Inbox, deal with it right away. Accept, accept as tentative or decline each request immediately. This prevents the meeting request from getting lost and assures it is properly entered into your calendar. It also lets the meeting organizer know whether or not you will attend or if there are scheduling problems. Never delete meeting requests that you must reject, instead Deny the request.
• If you would like additional people to attend, ask the meeting organizer to add that person to the attendee list. Never forward a meeting request to additional people. Doing so will prevent them from receiving meeting updates from the organizer. On the other hand, if you are the meeting organizer you may invite additional people by adding them to the attendee list or the original meeting. Updates from this point forward to be distributed to all attendees, including the new add-ons.
• Reminders. Make sure you setup reminders for your appointments and meetings. (Don't forget that reminders will only work for the main calendar.) You can set the reminder when you originally create appointments or accept meeting requests. You can use the Reminder feature to set up reminders that automatically prompt you at any interval that you specify before a designated event takes place.
• Convert personal appointments to meetings by opening the appointment and clicking on the Invite Attendees button. This will allow you to add names to the “To:” field and invite others to attend the event.
• Received an e-mail message about an event that you would like to attend and would now like to save as a meeting? Drag the message from your mailbox directly to your calendar. Fill in the appropriate date and time information and save the message as an appointment or even invite others to attend and now you have a meeting.
• Don't have time to manage your calendar? Going on vacation and would like to have your appointments and meetings managed while you're away? Then you can share your calendar and grant delegate access (this feature requires you to be using a Microsoft Exchange Server e-mail account). When you share your calendar, it allows others to see your availability without affecting their own calendar. When you delegate authority, they can accept or deny meetings on your behalf and the meeting originator will always know that who accepted directly, and who accepted as a delegate. Outlook makes it simple.
• Manage and schedule company resources such as equipment and conference rooms (this feature requires you to be using a Microsoft Exchange Server e-mail account). In order to schedule the resource, the resource must have its own mailbox on your Exchange server. Once the mailbox has been setup and permission has been given to others to schedule the resource, the resource can accept and reject invitations automatically. When someone wants to schedule the resource, it is invited to a meeting. The invitation is accepted if the resource is free, and the meeting is automatically entered in the resource's calendar.

By following the guidelines above, your calendar will be organized, accurate and an effective tool in the battle against disorganization.