Managing a Calendar in Microsoft Outlook 2013

  • 3/15/2013
In this chapter from Microsoft Outlook 2013 Plain & Simple, Jim Boyce explains everything you need to know about using the Calendar in Microsoft Outlook 2013.

The Microsoft Outlook 2013 calendar simplifies the burden of keeping and maintaining a schedule of meetings, appointments, events, and tasks. At a glance, you can quickly see your agenda in daily, weekly, or monthly views. With Outlook, you won’t have any excuses for missing a lunch date or forgetting a meeting.

You can use Outlook to keep track of recurring meetings or events so that you don’t have to manually enter these items each time they take place. For example, you might have a weekly staff meeting that takes place every Friday from 9:00 to 10:00 A.M. Make it a recurring meeting, and Outlook blocks out that day and time. Similarly, if your PTA meets every third Tuesday of the month at 7:00 P.M., you can set Outlook to schedule that meeting, as well.

Outlook includes an alert that displays a message prior to your calendar meeting, appointment, or task so that you won’t forget it. For example, you can set up Outlook to display a reminder of an upcoming meeting two or three days before its occurrence. If you need to prepare a presentation, document, or other item for the meeting, you give yourself ample time to do so. You then can “snooze” the reminder so that it gets your attention again later, but perhaps only three hours prior to the meeting.

Viewing your calendar

You can view your Outlook 2013 calendar in several different formats. Day view is an hour-by-hour view of your daily schedule, whereas Month view shows your schedule for the entire month. The Date Navigator is a small calendar with which you can navigate quickly to a specific day, week, or month. The To-Do Bar consolidates all of the features of task list, Date Navigator, and appointment list into one task pane.

Use the calendar views and Date Navigator

  1. At the bottom of the Folder pane, click the Calendar icon.

  2. View the week’s meetings and appointments.

  3. To display the current day in the current view, click Today.

  4. In the Date Navigator, click a different date.

  5. To view the selected day’s appointments and meetings, click Day.

  6. Click Month to see a month’s schedule.

  7. The displayed date range is highlighted in the Date Navigator.