Outlook offers the Calendar folder for making sure you don't miss activities you have scheduled for yourself. After you schedule an activity, it appears in the Calendar folder, where you can see daily appointments (in Day view), appointments for an entire week (in Work Week and Week views), or appointments for an entire month (in Month view). Figure 21-3 shows the Calendar screen in Day view. The Calendar was devised to tell you at a glance where you are expected to be and what you are expected to do each day, week, and month.
As Figure 21-3 shows, Outlook makes a somewhat arbitrary distinction between appointments, meetings, and events when it comes to scheduling. Following is an explanation of appointments, meetings, and events.
An appointment is an activity that occupies a specific time period. For example, the job interview that takes place between 9:00 and 9:30 in Figure 21-3 is an appointment. The yoga appointment that takes place between 4:30 and 5:00 is a recurring appointment—it happens every Tuesday. The alarm bell icons you see in Figure 21-3 mean that Outlook will make the computer chime before the appointment or meeting takes place.
A meeting, like an appointment, occupies a specific time period, but it involves other people besides yourself. If you are using Outlook at home, the difference between an appointment and a meeting doesn't matter at all; but if your computer is connected to a network and the network uses Microsoft Exchange Server, you can send invitations to others on the network at the same time as you schedule a meeting.
In Figure 21-3, a meeting takes place between 1:30 and 3:00, and a recurring meeting takes place between 12:00 and 1:00. Notice the two small heads in the 12:00 and 1:30 time slots—those heads tell you that a meeting has been scheduled. The revolving arrows mark recurring meetings or recurring appointments.
An event is an activity that occupies at least 24 hours of time. The classic example of an event is a birthday. Schedule a birthday so as not to forget a loved one's or boss's special day. An all-day trade show, for example, would also be scheduled as an event. Events appear at the top of the window on the Calendar screen. In Figure 21-3, the user has recorded a birthday.
The following pages explain how to schedule one-time and recurring appointments, meetings, and events, as well as how to view your schedule in different ways and delete, edit, and reschedule activities.
NOTE: "A Quick Geography Lesson," at the start of
Chapter 20, explains how to open the Calendar folder and other Outlook folders.
With Outlook, there are several ways that you can plan a meeting with someone not connected to your local Exchange Server. You can send someone an e-mail with your meeting attached as an iCalendar file, you can browse to someone’s schedule that has been published to the Internet as an iCalendar file, or you can publish your own Free and Busy information to the Internet as an iCalendar file.
To send a message with an attached iCalendar, select the meeting or appointment in your Calendar folder and choose Actions | Forward as iCalendar. Outlook creates a new e-mail message with an iCalendar attachment. Compose and send the e-mail normally. If the recipients are using a calendar program compatible with iCalendar, they will be able to open the activity and save it to their own calendar.
To browse someone’s iCalendar on the Internet, while viewing the Calendar folder, choose Actions | Plan a Meeting. Click the Invite Others button, then type in the URL of the iCalendar of the person whom you wish to invite. After connecting to the Internet and downloading the information, click OK, and then click Make a Meeting. Fill out the information for the meeting, then click the Send button.
To publish your own iCalendar to the Internet for anyone with an iCalendar-compatible calendar program (such as Outlook 2000 and the latest version of Lotus Organizer and Notes), choose Tools | Options, click the Calendar Options button, and then click the Free/Busy Options button. Select the Publish My Free/Busy Information check box, type the URL for your web site and the filename you want, and then click OK. Choose Tools | Send and Receive | Free/Busy Information to launch the Web Publishing Wizard and post your calendar information to your web site.
Follow these steps to schedule a recurring appointment, meeting, or event:
1. On one of the calendars in the upper-right corner of the Calendar screen, click on the first day on which the recurring activity is to take place.
2. Click the hour in the day at which the recurring activity takes place.
TIP: To turn a one-time activity into a recurring activity,
open it in the Calendar window and, when you see the Appointment, Meeting, or
Event dialog box, click the Recurrence button. To open an activity in the
Calendar window, double-click on it.
3. Choose an option from the Actions menu: New Recurring Appointment, or New Recurring Meeting. You see the Appointment Recurrence dialog box shown in Figure 21-5.
4. Under Appointment Time, make choices from the drop-down lists to tell Outlook how long the activity lasts.
5. Under Recurrence Pattern, click the Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Yearly option button. Depending on which button you click, you see a different array of choices to the right of the option buttons. If necessary, use the drop-down lists to more adequately tell Outlook when the meeting takes place.
6. Under Range Of Recurrence, click an option from the drop-down menus or click radio buttons to tell Outlook how far into the future these meetings will "recur."
7. Click OK. You see an Appointment, Meeting, or Event dialog box similar to the one in Figure 21-4.
8. Fill out the subject field and any other desired fields, then click Save and Close when finished.