Outlook’s ability to display more than one Calendar at a time, side-by-side or overlaid on each other can help you better organize and manage the many different sides of your life. But how do you actually work with these multiple Calendars?

The Basics

By default, Outlook displays multiple Calendars side-by-side. That means all you need to do is select the Calendars you want to view in My Calendars. Each Calendar is shown with a different color trim to make it easier for you to tell them apart. Your primary Calendar is always displayed on the left side of the Outlook window. Your other (secondary) Calendars, are to the right of the primary one.

To view Calendars overlaid, you start the same was as for seeing Calendars side-by-side. You select the Calendars you want to see in My Calendars. They will appear side-by-side at first. To overlay a secondary Calendar on the primary Calendar, click the left arrow next to the name of the secondary Calendar. Doing this tells Outlook that you want the secondary Calendar to be overlaid on the primary Calendar. Overlaying Calendars always entails overlaying one or more secondary Calendars on the primary Calendar, but beyond that, you have complete freedom to mix and match overlaid and side-by-side Calendars. Clicking the right arrow next to the name of a secondary Calendarcauses it to switch from overlaid mode to side-by-side. Clicking the right arrow beside the name of the primary Calendar causes all the overlaid Calendars to go back to side-by-side mode.

Modifying Calendar Options

While the default Calendar options generally work well, a few of the options are particularly useful in making Outlook display Calendars in ways that match your personal schedule or your company’s working hours. Here’s an example. I am very much a morning person, and frequently begin my work day at 4:30 or 5:00 AM. On the other hand, I have some night owl friends who don’t start working until 10:00 in the morning or later. Outlook lets you easily adjust the Calendar view to match these starting times and a variety of other individual schedule variations. Follow these steps to see the options:

1. In the main Outlook window, click Tools > Options. This opens the Options dialog box.
2. In the Calendar section of the Options dialog box, click Calendar Options. The Calendar Options dialog box appears
3. In the Calendar Work Week section of the dialog box, tell Outlook which days are part of your workweek by setting the appropriate day check boxes. You can also set the First Day Of Week, First Week Of Year, Start Time, and End Time options if these are relevant to your personal situation.
4. Click OK to put the changes into effect.

At this point, you have everything you need to get your life more organized through the use of Outlook’s multiple Calendars.

Note: If you would like to see tips and tricks that will help you make even better use of Outlook Calendars, click here.

Learning how to work with multiple Calendars is just one of the topics covered in Lesson 6 of the 6-week online course, Introduction to Outlook 2007. There we talk about how to work with multiple Calendars, along with all other major aspects of using Calendars in Outlook. If strengthening your Outlook 2007 skills in this time of uncertain job prospects makes sense to you, and you like the idea of a structured class with the ability to interact with your instructor, I urge you to visit http://IntroToOutlook2007.info to learn more about the course.

Tags: introduction to outlook 2007, multiple calendars, outlook 2007, outlook multiple calendars, view multiple calendars

This entry was posted on Monday, March 30th, 2009 at 1:35 pm and is filed under Computers and Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.