Tame your computer - co-ordinate calendars

In her regular series for Cambridge Network members, software training expert Karen Roem offers handy tips to help you 'Tame your computer'. This week she explains how to send a copy of your calendar as an email attachment to speed up scheduling meetings with externals (Microsoft Outlook)...

Following the large interest in and attendance of the PA Day earlier this year, the Møller Centre in Cambridge held another event for PAs and EAs last Friday and I was – once again – invited to be a guest speaker.

This time I helped the 50-odd delegates (odd, as in being in excess of the indicated number; not odd as in strange ;) to gain control over their and their boss’ busy Outlook calendar. The feature I showed, to help scheduling a meeting with someone outside your organisation, seemed to strike a chord... As they don’t have access to your calendar this can be a bit of a pain, with lots of messages being sent backwards and forwards. Instead, why not send your calendar to someone in another company as an email attachment – or ask them to forward their calendar to you?

Here’s how:

  1. Open your Calendar as normal (CTRL + 2, anyone?)
  2. Click on the Email Calendar button in the Share group on the Home tab.
  3. Change the calendar information you want to include using the various options.
  4. Click OK.
  5. Complete and send the message as normal.

The recipient will see the time as “Free”, “Busy”, “Tentative”, or “Out of Office”, unless you changed the level of detail in step 3. The calendar attachment will open side-by-side to their own, which means they can easily compare its content. Click on the Schedule View button to show the calendars in a horizontal layout.

By the way, you won’t be able to use the Scheduling tool to help you find the best time for a meeting with the “external calendar”, but as all dates that contain appointments in either of the calendars are bold in the tiny calendars in the To-Do Bar you can use that to quickly find suitable dates.  (For some weird reason Microsoft has removed the days-with-appointments-in-bold feature from version 2013 onwards.)

Oh, and the recipient does not have to use Outlook in order to see the information.

Related tips:

Find the best time to schedule a meeting

Display multiple calendar months in the Date Navigator

View multiple calendars at the same time

Quickly jump between the various Outlook components

30 November 2018

Karen Roem offers software training and support through her company Roem Ltd.  Contact her by email (Karen@roem.co.uk) or visit her website at  www.roem.co.uk


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