Chapter 8. Managing a Calendar
In this section:
Microsoft Outlook’s calendar simplifies the burden of keeping and maintaining a schedule of meetings, appointments, events, and tasks. At a glance, you can quickly see your agenda in daily, monthly, or yearly views. With Outlook, you won’t have any excuses for missing a lunch date or forgetting a meeting.
Outlook enables you to keep track of recurring meetings or events so that you don’t have to manually enter these items each time they take place. For example, you might have a weekly staff meeting that takes place every Friday from 9:00–10:00 a.m. Make it a recurring meeting, and Outlook blocks out that day and time. Similarly, if your PTA meets every third Wednesday of the month at 7:00 p.m., you can set Outlook to schedule that meeting as well.
Outlook includes a reminder alarm that displays a message prior to your Calendar items so you won’t forget a meeting, appointment, or task. For example, you can set up Outlook to display a reminder of an upcoming meeting two or three days before the meeting. This way, if you need to prepare a presentation, document, or other item for the meeting you give yourself ample time to do so. You then can "snooze" the reminder so it goes off again, but perhaps only three hours prior to the meeting.
With Outlook’s calendar you’re not stuck with one view—you can view your calendar in several different formats. Day view is an hour-by-hour view of your daily schedule, while Month view shows your schedule for the entire month. The Date Navigator is a small calendar with which you can navigate quickly to a specific day, week, or month, while the To-Do Bar consolidates all of the features of task list, Date Navigator, and appointment list into one task pane.
Click the Calendar icon on the Navigation Pane.
Click the Day tab at the top of the calendar.
Click a day on the Date Navigator to display it in the Calendar view.
Click to the left of a week on the Date Navigator to display that week in the Calendar view.
Click the right arrow on the Date Navigator to move to the next month.
Tip
You can access the current, last three, and next three months by clicking the month name in the Date Navigator. This is handy if you want to jump back a few months or jump forward a month or two.
Try This!
To see today’s date, click the Today button on the Standard toolbar. If the current month is showing in the Date Navigator, click the boxed date to display today’s date.
Click the Calendar icon on the Navigation Pane.
Choose a type of view from the View menu.
Click Day to see an hourly breakdown of your day.
Click Work Week to see a workweek’s schedule by hour.
Click Week to see a week’s schedule.
Click Month to see a month’s schedule.
Tip
You can make more room available for the Calendar pane on the screen by resizing the Navigation Pane.
Tip
To return to today’s date, right-click inside a view and choose Today from the shortcut menu that appears.
Click the Calendar icon on the Navigation Pane.
Choose View, then choose Normal from the To-Do Bar submenu.
Tip
Choose the Minimized option from the To-Do Bar submenu to make the To-Do Bar automatically hide at the edge of the Outlook window.
Click a date on the Date Navigator to view appointments for that date.
View upcoming appointments.
View current tasks.
Tip
Depending on the options you set for the To-Do Bar, portions of the Appointments or Tasks areas of the To-Do Bar might be blank.
