The quick-and-dirty way to enter an appointment

Some appointments don’t need much explanation. If you’re having lunch with Mom on Friday, there’s no reason to make a big production out of entering the appointment:

1. Make sure the calendar is open in a view that shows the hours of the day in a column.

   For example, the Work Week view does.

2. Click the starting time of your appointment.

3. Type a description.

   Lunch with Mom works.

4. Press Enter.

   Your appointment is now part of your official schedule — faster than you can say “Waiter!”

The complete way to enter an appointment

Appointments you set up at work often require you to include a little more information than you’d need for your lunch date with Mom. You might want to add:

• Details about the location of a meeting
• Notes about the meeting agenda
• A category (so you can show the boss how much time you spend with your clients)

When you want to give an appointment the full treatment, use the complete method:

1. Click Calendar in the Navigator pane.

   Your calendar appears.

2. Click the New Appointment button on the Home tab on the Ribbon.

   The Appointment form opens, as shown in Figure 8-3.

   Or press Ctrl+N to open the screen that lets you create a new item in your calendar.

3. Click in the Subject box and type something there to help you remember what the appointment’s about.

   For example, type Dentist appointment or Deposit lottery winnings or whatever. This text shows up on your calendar.

4. Click in the Location box and enter the location.

   This step is optional, but it can be helpful information to add to your appointment.

   Notice the little triangle (scroll-bar button) at the right side of the box? If you click the triangle, you see a list of the last few locations where you scheduled appointments so you can use the same places repeatedly without having to retype them. Now that so many people hold meetings on Skype or through conference calls, this is a good spot to record those kinds of details. You can enter the dial-in number and conference code in the location line or note that it’s a Skype meeting.

5. Add any other information you need to remember about your appointment.

   The large, empty box on the Appointment form is a great place to save driving directions, meeting agendas, or anything else that might be helpful to remember when the appointment time arrives.

6. Click the Save & Close button.

   The appointment you created appears in your calendar, as shown in Figure 8-4. You may have to change your Calendar view by clicking the Date Navigator on the date the appointment occurs so you can see your new appointment.

If you want to see reminders for all your important appointments, you must keep Outlook running so the reminders pop up. You can keep Outlook running in the background if you start a second program, such as Microsoft Word. When the reminder time arrives, you see a dialog box similar to the one shown in Figure 8-5.

Not this time: Changing dates

You can be as fickle as you want with Outlook. In fact, to change the time of a scheduled item, just drag the appointment from where it is to where you want it to be, as shown in Figure 8-6. Or back again … maybe … if you feel like it… .

To change an appointment, follow these steps:

1. Click the appointment in the Calendar view.

   A dark border appears around the edge of the appointment.

2. Make sure you’re in Work Week view, Week view, or Month view.

3. Drag the appointment to the time or date you want it to be.

   If you want to copy an appointment for another time, hold down Ctrl while you use the mouse to drag the appointment to another time or date. For example, if you’re scheduling a summer intern orientation from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. and again from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., you can create the 9 a.m. appointment and then copy it to 1 p.m. by holding Ctrl and dragging the appointment. Then, you have two appointments with the same subject, location, and date — but with different start times.

   If you copy an appointment to a different date by dragging the appointment to a date on the Date Navigator, you keep the hour of the appointment but change the date.

You can change an appointment to a date you can’t see on the calendar by following these steps:

1. Double-click the appointment.

   The Appointment window opens.

2. Click the Calendar icon in the leftmost Start Time box to see the selected month’s calendar.

   A drop-down calendar appears, as shown in Figure 8-7.

3. Pick the month by clicking one of the triangles beside the month’s name.

   Clicking the left triangle moves you one month earlier; clicking the right triangle moves you one month later.

4. Click the day of the month you want.

5. Click in the rightmost Start Time text box and enter the appointment’s new time — if needed.

   You can also use the scroll-down button to the right of the time to select a new start time.

6. Make any other changes you need in the appointment.

   Click the information you want to change and type the revised information over it.

7. Click the Save & Close button.

Imagine that your dentist calls to tell you that you won’t need a root canal after all but that you’ll still need a routine checkup. To change the length of an appointment, follow these steps:

1. Click the appointment in Day, Work Week, or Week view.

   This process doesn’t work in Month view because you can’t see the time without opening the appointment.

2. Move the mouse pointer over the handles at the top or the bottom of the appointment.

   When the pointer is in the right place, it turns into a two-headed arrow.

3. Drag the bottom line down to make the appointment time longer; drag the bottom line up to make the appointment shorter.

You also can shorten an appointment to less than 30 minutes. Follow these steps:

1. Double-click the appointment.
2. Click the End Time box.
3. Type the ending time.
4. Click the Save & Close button.

You can enter times in Outlook without adding colons and often without using a.m. or p.m. Outlook translates 443 as 4:43 p.m. If you plan lots of appointments at 4:43 a.m., just type 443A. (Just don’t call me at that hour, okay?) You can also enter time in the 24-hour format — 1643 would be 4:43 p.m. — but Outlook likes normal time better, so the time will display as 4:43.

Not ever: Breaking dates

Well, sometimes things just don’t work out. Sorry about that. Even if it’s hard for you to forget, with the click of a mouse, Outlook deletes dates you otherwise fondly remember. Okay, two clicks of a mouse. C’est la vie, c’est l’amour, c’est la guerre. (Look for my next book: Tawdry French Clichés For Dummies.)

To delete an appointment (after you’ve called to break it), follow these steps:

1. Right-click on the appointment.
2. Choose Delete. As far as Outlook is concerned, your appointment is cancelled.

By pressing Ctrl+D, you can delete an appointment with just one brusque keystroke. How cold. Just make sure you’ve selected the correct appointment first!

We’ve got to keep seeing each other: Recurring dates

Some appointments are like a meal at a Chinese restaurant: As soon as you’re done with one, you’re ready for another. With Outlook, you can easily create an appointment that comes back like last night’s spicy Szechwan noodles.

To create a recurring (that is, regularly scheduled) appointment, follow these steps:

1. Click the appointment you want to repeat.

   The appointment is highlighted.

2. Click the Recurrence button on the Ribbon, as shown in Figure 8-8.

   The Appointment Recurrence dialog box opens, as shown in Figure 8-9. If you simply click the OK button to accept the preset choices in the Appointment Recurrence dialog box, your appointment will repeat at the same time each week forever. However, you might not be prepared to schedule meetings from now until doomsday. By the way, doomsday isn’t a federal holiday; you’ll still have to work (unless you take a personal doomsday). Thus, you might want to fill in the rest of the Appointment Recurrence dialog box just to be sure.

3. Click in the Start text box and enter the starting time.

   Outlook assumes your appointment is 30 minutes long unless you tell it otherwise by also entering an ending time. Click in the End box and enter an ending time if you feel the need.

4. In the Recurrence Pattern section, click the Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Yearly option button to select how often the appointment recurs.
5. In the next part of the Recurrence pattern section, choose how many times the appointment occurs.
6. In the Range of recurrence section, enter the first occurrence in the Start box.

7. Choose when the appointments will stop.

   You can select from these options:

   • No end date (infinity)
   • End after (a certain number of occurrences)
   • End by (a certain date)

8. Click the OK button.

   The Appointment Recurrence dialog box closes and the Appointment form appears; refer to Figure 8-3.

9. Click in the Subject box and enter the subject.
10. Click in the Location box and enter the location.
11. Click the Save & Close button.

Your appointment appears in your Outlook calendar with a symbol in the lower-right corner to show that it’s a recurring appointment, as shown in Figure 8-10. The symbol looks like two little arrows chasing each other’s tails — a little bit like people who go to too many recurring meetings. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Even a recurring appointment gets changed once in a while. Edit a recurring appointment this way:

1. Double-click the appointment you want to edit.

   The Open Recurring Item dialog box opens.

2. Choose whether you want to change just the occurrence you clicked or the whole series.

3. Click the OK button.

   The appointment appears, displaying the recurrence pattern below the location, as shown in Figure 8-11.

4. Edit the details for the appointment.

   To change the pattern, click the Recurrence button, change the recurrence, and click the OK button.

5. Click the Save & Close button.

I find it helpful to enter regular appointments, such as classes or reoccurring recreational events, even if I’m sure I won’t forget them. Entering all my activities into Outlook prevents me from scheduling conflicting appointments.

Creating multiple calendars

To create an additional Outlook Calendar, follow these steps:

1. Click the Calendar button in the Navigator pane.
2. Click Open Calendar in the Manage Calendars group on the Home tab on the Ribbon.
3. Choose Create New Blank Calendar.
4. Give your new calendar a name.

5. Click OK.

   The name you’ve assigned to your new calendar appears in the Folder pane — to the right of a blank check box. If you select the check box, your new calendar will appear in the Information Viewer screen side by side with your original calendar — using the same Day, Week, or Month view, as shown in Figure 8-15. If you deselect the check box to remove the check mark, the calendar you deselected disappears.

Managing multiple calendars

You can’t be in two places at once. Even if you could, you wouldn’t want your boss to know that; otherwise, you’d end up having to be everywhere at once for the same pay. That’s why you’ll like the fact you can superimpose Outlook Calendars to avoid schedule conflicts. When you open two calendars side by side, one of the two calendars displays an arrow on the tab of the calendar’s name at the top of the screen. By clicking that arrow, you can superimpose the two calendars to see whether any appointments conflict, as shown in Figure 8-16.