Crabby Office Lady

There are some sweet features of the Outlook 2003 Calendar that I'll bet you've never heard about. Here are five of my favorites that deserve some attention.

I want you to be comfortable when you're scheduling meetings, creating reminders, and trying to balance everything in this juggling act we call life. Outlook 2003 has a few handy-dandy features that will help you do just that. Everyone ready? Throw those balls in the air!

Many calendars holding hands

Perhaps you lead many lives: you have a job, you run a household, and maybe you're even a scout leader. Today, different lives often require different calendars. Now, with Outlook 2003, you can view all of them side-by-side.

It's as easy as pie to create a new calendar: just create a new folder under the Calender folder in the Outlook folder list, give it a name, and voilà, another calendar! The calendars scroll together like a disciplined marching band, and they're color-coded and labeled to help you set up meetings or compare schedules quickly.

Here is a links to help you set up additional calendars:

• Create an additional calendar

Sharing calendars: It just feels good

Sharing is good, right, and necessary. This is something we're taught from the time we can drool. And while it isn't always easy to share (and, frankly, not ideal for certain things like toothbrushes and bad genes), sharing your schedule with coworkers can be quite beneficial.

With Outlook 2003, you can allow anyone to access your calendar. You can specify the people who can access your calendar. And, fair's fair, you can open another person's calendar (assuming that they give you permission). Like any other kind of sharing between Microsoft Windows or Office folders, you can specify how much access each person has to your calendar items.

 Note   This feature works only if you have a Microsoft Exchange Server e-mail account.

Not only can you learn how to share your calendar, but also how to make some items private, how to set up permissions, and how to open another person's calendar.

• Share my calendar
• Training course: See and share multiple calendars
  

   Note   If you want to view a training course, you have to have at least one Office 2003 program — any program — installed. But if you want to take the practice seesion at the end of the course, you have to have that particular Office 2003 program installed.

When sharing is already part of the plan

Now that you are sharing, what if you and your teammates keep a calendar on a Windows SharePoint™ Services team Web site? No problem. With just one click, you can add the data from that team calendar to Outlook in the form of another calendar. And here's how you do it:

• Add Windows SharePoint Services data to your calendar

 Note   Sharing team calendars requires Microsoft Windows Server 2003 running Windows SharePoint Services. As well, you must create or edit your calendar entries directly on the Windows SharePoint Services site using your Web browser to make them show up in the newly created Outlook calendar.

Make the calendar your own

Just as I advised you to get comfy with Office in my column Go ahead and nest: Customizing Office, I'll say it again when it comes to the Outlook Calendar: you're the one using it, so shouldn't you make it as personalized as possible? Here's a short list of some ways you can set up your calendar to reflect your true personality:

• Change the look of your calendar
  Set the number of days displayed in the calendar, change the view, and even specify a background for a calendar saved to the Web.
• Turn on or off calendar details
  Maybe you want others to be able to see your calendar item details...and maybe you don't.
• Add or remove holidays in your calendar
  By default, no holidays are loaded when you begin using Outlook (can you believe that?). Now you can pick and choose which countries' holidays you'd like to display. Belgium, Brazil, Bolivia, anyone?
• Color your calendar
  Color appointments, meetings, text, backgrounds, and even overdue or completed tasks.

Print all or none

Sometimes you just want to see, on paper, what's going on for the day, week, or month. Maybe you want to tape your calendar to your own chest so that everyone can see how dang busy you are. Whatever your reasons, you can print a calendar with all your appointments in it that covers as many days as you'd like. You can even choose to show or hide the details or private appointments.

 Note    You can even print a blank calendar to make a pretend calendar for someone less busy. Whatever makes you feel better, dearie.

• Print a calendar

Change a message or appointment into a meeting

I know: you're tired, you're cranky, and you just want things to be easy today. It's OK—we all have those days. But even if you're feeling in the pink, you can still use these quick and easy ways to create meetings. Sure, you can use the old Meeting Request command on the File menu and then fill in all the details. Or, you can let your already-created message or appointment do the work for you. Now go take a nap, honey—you look peaked.

• Turn a message into a meeting request
• Turn an appointment into a meeting

And there you have it: five special ways to make sure your Outlook calendar is as cool and nifty (or as heartless and shifty) as you are.

"We must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind us to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle and mystery." — H.G. Wells

About the author

Annik Stahl, the Crabby Office Lady columnist, takes all of your complaints, compliments, and knee-jerk reactions to heart. Therefore, she graciously asks that you let her know whether this column was useful to you — or not — by entering your feedback using the Was this information helpful? tool below. And remember: If you don't vote, you can't complain.