Introduction to Calendar in Outlook 2007
Introduction - Display and Navigation
To display the calendar click on Calendar in the navigation pane (at the bottom left of the Outlook window). [Subsequently click on Mail to return to e-mail etc.]
You can change the display of the calendar with the Day, Work Week (5-day week), Week (7-day week), and Month buttons on the Home tab. Week or Work week seem to be best for most screen sizes. The Month button offers different levels of detail.
You can move about the calendar using the Next and Previous arrow buttons. There is also a Today button on the Home tab, and a View Date button which lets you select a date to display.
Appointments
Click the New (Appointment) button or press Ctrl+N to create an appointment when you are busy.
Use the Subject area to give the appointment a title - what is it that you will be doing? If it's helpful, use Location to say where it will be. Use Start time and date and End time and date to specify when the appointment starts and ends. You can use the body of the appointment (like the body of an e-mail) for any further information.
In the Appointment tab, in the Options group, the Show As status defaults to Busy, but the other options are Out of Office, Tentative, or Free. You might use "Free" to remind yourself when something is going to happen, even though you won't personally be attending. Set the Status as appropriate.
Reminder defaults to 15 minutes before the appointment, and will give you a reminder at the specified time. Amend this as required (scroll up for None).
Note that also in the Options group there is a Private button which you may wish to use if you choose to share your calendar details with others but you want the details of this appointment to be private.
Make any other settings required and click Save & Close to create the appointment.
Note that you can have multiple events at the same or overlapping times. You will get a warning if there are overlapping appointments not marked as Free.
All Day Events
Either right-click in the all day area at the top of a particular day and select New All Day Event or create an appointment as above and select the All day event checkbox (after Start time). This is very like an Appointment, but it lasts for one or more whole days.
Note that the Show As status defaults to Free. Set it as required.
You could use this with a Show As of "Out of Office" for your holidays, or with a Show As of "Busy" or "Free" as appropriate for conferences and open days (depending on whether you will attend).
Make any other settings required and click Save & Close to create the all day event.
Recurrence
![[Recurrence]](o2007-cal-images/recurrence.png){kind=small}
Quite often you will have appointments (and perhaps all day events) which regularly repeat. You do not have to create a new appointment for each occurrence, you can set these up in one go using the Recurrence button on the appointment (or all day event).
The Recurrence button will give you common options such as Once only, Every Wednesday, Day 18 of Every Month, Every 18 May, Every Day, and Custom. (These examples were for an appointment created on Wednesday 18 May.) The Custom option gives you further options:
Recurrence pattern can be set to Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Yearly.
For all options you can specify the End by date, or End after so many occurences, or leave at at No end date for it to continue indefinitely).
For Weekly you can specify Recur every so many (defaults to 1) weeks. Leave it at 1 for every week, set it to 2 for every two weeks, etc. Similar options exist for Daily and Monthly (every 3 months would be once a quarter, etc.).
For Weekly you can specify one or more than one weekday (with Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday checkboxes).
With Monthly you can specify a particular Day date like the 10th. Alternatively you can specify the First, Second, Third, Fourth, or Last and then choose from Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or Day, or Weekday, or Weekend day. Thus you can have the appointment being the Third Tuesday in the month, or the First weekday.
Note that as well as having recurring appointments, you can have recurring meetings (which involve other people) - you can invite a group of people to a recurring meeting such as a committee meeting, e.g. once a month. See Organising a Meeting ("movie") for details of meetings.
Managing recurring appointments and meetings
Changing the whole series
If you open a recurring appointment or a recurring meeting in the calendar, you will be asked Do you want to open only the occurrence or the series?
Choose Open the Series and click OK to open the series.
Click on the Recurrence button to change the rules of the recurrence for the entire series.
For example, here you could set the End date for the series.
As another example, if in the Action group you click the Delete button ![[Delete]](o2007-cal-images/delete.png){kind=small}
, you will remove every occurrence of this repeating event (including those in the past).
Changing one single appointment (or meeting) in the series
If you double-click on an occurrence of a recurring meeting or appointment in the calendar, choose Open this occurrence and click OK, you will open up that single occurrence and not the entire series.
If you make any changes here they apply to just this once occurrence of the series. For example if you click the Delete button , you will remove just this one repeating event - the others will stay in place. Note that you can change the time and / or date of this once occurrence.