Manage Your Calendar in Outlook 2007

Adding Items to Calendar

Calendar contains four different types of items. Each item appears in a different place on Calendar and contains information specific to its type. The four items include the following:

• Appointment
• Event
• Meeting
• Task

To access the Calendar module, click "Calendar" from the Navigation Pane. The Calendar module includes Date Navigator for switching dates quickly, options for sharing, searching and publishing Calendars, and the To-Do Bar. Date Navigator is the small calendar that appears to the left of the current Calendar view. Click a date in the Date Navigator to jump to the selected date.

At the top of the Calendar, click Day, Week or Month to switch views. The Back and Forward navigation buttons appear below these views to navigate to the previous and next day, week or month in the calendar.

For the Week view, you can limit the view to Monday through Friday for the week by clicking "Show work week" or display all seven days by clicking "Show full week." These appear next to the Day, Week and Month tabs.

Click the Month tab to switch to Month view and you can indicate if you want to view details on the calendar. The following lists your three detail choices:

• Low: Displays events only.
• Medium: Displays events and appointments, which appear as solid bars based on the time of day they're scheduled.
• High: Displays start and end time for all events and appointments.

Outlook 2007 allows you to view two or more calendars side-by-side in Calendar. This comes in handy when you need to compare calendars. You might have one calendar for work and one for personal, or you need to compare coworker, employee, or family calendars. You can view multiple calendars by day, week or month. In the Navigation Pane, click the check box of each calendar you want to view to see them side-by-side.

You can also view calendars in overlay mode. Again, go into Navigation Pane and check the calendars you want to view. Click the arrow in the calendar's tab and the calendars overlap. Overlay another calendar by clicking its arrow on the tab. The items in the Calendar on the back tab appear lighter while the ones in the front tab appear darker. Remove a Calendar from Overlay by clicking its tab.

When you add a new item to the Calendar, Outlook automatically adds a reminder that notifies you 15 minutes before the start time. For events, Outlook notifies you 18 hours before they start.

Change the reminder setting with the following steps:

1. Double-click the Calendar item to open it.
2. Click the down-arrow next to Reminder and select the reminder time.
3. Click the down-arrow again, if you wish to add sound to the reminder.

You can change the default setting for reminders in the Options menu. Select Options in the Tools menu. Calendar appears under the Preferences tab. To turn off reminders, deselect the check beside Default reminder. To change how much time in advance to remind you of an appointment, select the time from the down-arrow that appears next to Calendar Options.