Managing a Calendar in Microsoft Outlook 2010

Setting Up a Meeting

A meeting is an activity (often a physical meeting or conference call) that involves other people and sometimes resources. A resource can be a conference room, VCR, slide projector, telephones, laptop computer, or other equipment. Usually a meeting involves you and at least two other people (but can certainly be just you and one other person). Outlook sends a meeting invitation to every person you designate, and they can accept or reject the request or propose a new time for the meeting.

Create a Meeting in a Block of Time

1. Click the Calendar icon on the Navigation Pane.

2. Highlight a block of time on the meeting day for the meeting.

3. Click New Meeting on the Home tab.

   

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   You can use the Scheduling Assistant to help you find a time that is open for all invitees, and you can also identify available resources. To switch to the Scheduling Assistant view, click Scheduling Assistant in the Show group on the Meeting tab of the ribbon.

4. Click To.

5. Select attendees and resources from the Address Book, or type the addresses manually.

6. Click Required if the invitee needs to attend.

7. Click Optional if the invitee isn’t required to attend.

   

8. Click OK when you are done.

9. Type a description of the meeting in the Subject box.

10. Type the location of the meeting in the Location box.

11. Add notes, directions, or comments for the meeting as needed.

12. Click Send.

    

Try This!

When you type your meeting subject, keep it short but descriptive. “Team Meeting” may not be enough if people are members of multiple teams. Use something specific like “Development Team Meeting” for your description.

Change the Meeting Date and Time

Outlook uses the currently selected date and time by default when you create a new meeting request. You can change the date and time as you need to, rather than accept the default.

1. Create a new meeting.

2. Add attendees, a subject, and a location for the meeting.

3. Click the down arrow in the Start Time date field, and select the starting date.

4. Click the down arrow in the Start Time hour field, and select the starting time of the meeting.

5. Click the down arrow in the End Time hour field, and select the ending time of the meeting.

6. Click Send.

   

CAUTION

Make sure that your attendee list has correct e-mail addresses. If you attempt to send the meeting request to someone not in one of your address books, Outlook lets you know that the person can’t be validated.

See Also

For information on the Address Book and adding new contacts, see Chapter 7.

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Outlook provides the Scheduling Assistant to help you set up meetings with other people in your organization. The Scheduling Assistant lets you see other people’s schedules if they have mailboxes in the same Exchange Server environment.