Manage Scheduling in Microsoft Outlook 2016

Convert calendar items

All Outlook calendar items are built from the same basic template. These two factors define a calendar item as an appointment, event, or meeting:

• Whether the item has specific start and end times or is all day
• Whether you invite other people through Outlook

You can easily convert an appointment into an event or meeting, or convert an event into an appointment or an invited event.

If you want to schedule an appointment, event, or meeting based on the information in an email message that you receive, you can easily do so by dragging the message to the calendar. For example, if a friend or co-worker sends you a message that contains the details of the grand opening for a local art gallery, you can add that information to your calendar. You can retain any or all of the message information as part of the calendar item so that you (or other meeting participants) have the information on hand when you need it. After creating the calendar item, you can delete the actual message from your Inbox.

To create an appointment from an email message

1. Display your Inbox.
2. Drag the message from the message list to the Calendar link or button on the Navigation Bar.
3. After the cursor changes to a plus sign, release the mouse button to create an appointment based on the message and open the appointment window for editing. The appointment has the subject and content of the original message. The start and end times are set to the next half-hour increment following the current time.

4. Set the date and times for the appointment, and do any of the following:

   • In the Options group, change the availability, reminder time, or recurrence.
   • In the Tags group, assign a category to the appointment, mark it as private, or change the priority.
   • In the content pane, edit the original message content to suit the requirements of the appointment.
5. In the appointment window, click the Save & Close button to save the appointment to your calendar.

See Also

For information about adding message content to your To-Do List, see “Create tasks” in Chapter 11, “Track tasks.”

To convert an appointment to an event

1. Open the appointment window.
2. At the right end of the Start time row, select the All day event check box.
3. Change the event date, options, or tags, and then save and close the event window.

To convert an appointment to a meeting

1. Open the appointment window.
2. On the Appointment tab in the Attendees group, click the Invite Attendees button to add a To box to the header and display the meeting window features.
3. Enter contact information for the people you want to invite to the meeting.
4. Add a location if necessary, and then click the Send Invitation button.

To convert an event to an invited event

1. Open the event window.
2. On the Event tab, in the Attendees group, click the Invite Attendees button to add a To box to the header and display the meeting window features.
3. Enter contact information for the people you want to invite to the event.
4. Add a location if necessary, and then click the Send Invitation button.

To convert an event to an appointment

1. Open the event window.
2. At the right end of the Start time row, clear the All day event check box.
3. Set the appointment start and end times, and change the options as necessary. Then save and close the appointment window.