Managing a Calendar in Microsoft Outlook 2010

In this section:

• Viewing Your Calendar

• Adding an Appointment

• Adding an Event

• Setting Up a Meeting

• Updating Calendar Information

• Inserting Items, Objects, and Files in a Calendar Item

• Working with Reminders

• Sharing Calendar Information

• Printing Calendars

The Microsoft Outlook 2010 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, weekly, or monthly 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 A.M. to 10:00 A.M. Make it a recurring meeting, and Outlook blocks out that day and time. Similarly, if your PTA meets every third Tuesday of the month at 7:00 P.M., you can set Outlook to schedule that meeting as well.

Outlook includes an alert that displays a message prior to your Calendar meeting, appointment, or task so that you won’t forget it. For example, you can set up Outlook to display a reminder of an upcoming meeting two or three days before its occurrence. 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 gets your attention again later, but perhaps only three hours prior to the meeting.

Viewing Your Calendar

You can view your Outlook calendar in several different formats. Day view is an hour-by-hour view of your daily schedule, whereas 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.

Use the Date Navigator

1. Click the Calendar icon on the Navigation Pane.

2. Click the Day button on the Home tab.

3. Click a day on the Date Navigator to display it in the Calendar view.

4. Click to the left of a week on the Date Navigator to display that week in the Calendar view.

5. Click the right arrow on the Date Navigator to move to the next month.

   

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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 in the Go To group on the Home tab. If the current month is showing in the Date Navigator, click the boxed date to display today’s date.

Use the Calendar View

1. Click the Calendar icon on the Navigation Pane.

2. Click to see an hourly breakdown of your day.

3. Click Work Week to see a workweek’s schedule by hour.

4. Click Week to see a week’s scheduling (including weekend days).

5. Click Month to see a month’s schedule.

   

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You can make more room available for the Calendar pane on the screen by resizing or minimizing the Navigation Pane.

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To return to today’s date, right-click inside a view and choose Today from the shortcut menu that appears.

Use the To-Do Bar

1. Click the Calendar icon on the Navigation Pane.

2. Click the View tab.

3. Click Layout.

4. Click To-Do Bar, and then choose Normal.

   

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   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.

5. Click a date on the Date Navigator to view appointments for that date.

6. View upcoming appointments.

7. View current tasks.

   

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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.