February 25, 2009

 

Outlook is an effective instrument for your computer-aided scheduling. It has a comprehensive repertoire of features, which many users only know and use partly.

 

Outlook offers the elements appointments, meeting and events with which you are able to schedule calendar optimal.

 

With short summaries we want to show you how you can use these elements to best reconcile your scheduling.

 

 

Summaries holidays for your team

 

You can easily remember your own holiday dates – but how is it about the holiday dates of your colleagues? It would be best, if the absence of other team members would appear directly on your own calendar, of course without blocking valuable space in your calendar.
Let all employees enter their vacation in your own calendar. The convening of meetings and other appointments via Outlook is easier for you if you already know who can participate and who does not.

 

With a meeting request you are able to insert your holiday dates in the calendar of your fellow team members quickly. This ensures that your holiday period cannot be reserved from other colleagues in the calendar simultaneously.

 

To insert your own vacation dates now in the calendar of your colleagues by using a meeting request, follow these steps:

 

1. Call in the calendar the sequence of commands File/New. Then click on meeting request. This dialog can also be opened with CTRL+SHIFT+Q.

 

2. In the field TO you can enter the names of the people, you want to inform about your holiday dates.

 

3. In the subject box you must enter your name and the word “holiday”. You can also enter any other reason for an absence.

 

4. Click on “Start” and enter the date on which your holiday or any other absence begins.

 

5. Click in “End” and enter the date on which your holiday or any other absence ends.

 

6. Place a check mark before “All-day Event”.

 

7. In the drop-down list, select “View as” (or: show time as) the entry “Free”.

 

8. Click “Send” to close the dialog and send the meeting request.

 

 

 

No unnecessary information: how to avoid answers to your holiday planning

 

In certain cases it is not required that you track the answers of the participants to your meeting request. For example if you send a meeting request to a large number of participants or like already mentioned here – inform about your holiday planning.

 

1. Choose file/new/meeting request.

 

2. In the menu “Actions” click “Answer to request”. This disables the answering option.

 

3. Create the meeting request and select the options you want.

 

4. Click “Send”.

 

Please note that if you disable the option “Answer to request”, you cannot trace, whether the participants accepted the request, accepted under reserve or rejected it. On the index card “History” for the meeting no answers of participants will be shown.

 

 

 

How to import important events in your calendar

 

Special groups of team members in a company often need to keep dates. Usually this means that you enter the data in a calendar and distribute copies thereof to team members or send E-Mail reminders.

 

A better and easier way to provide colleagues with customized files, is to complement the the by Microsoft supplied file called Outlook.hol (from Outlook 2002), or Outlook.txt (Outlook 98/2000) with your own holiday dates and appointments.

 

Proceed as follows, to enter all dates for a specific event for all concerned employees to see:

 

1. Close you Outlook, if it runs already.

 

2. Browse the following file and create a backup copy: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office11\1031\outlook.hol.

 

3. Open the file “Outlook.hol” or “Outlook.txt” in the Windows editor (Start/Programs/Accessories)

 

4. Press “CTRL+End” to place the insertion point at the end of the file.

 

5. Enter a new header in the following format:

 

Country or description: ###
Event description: yyyy/MM/DD
Event description: yyyy/MM/DD

 

In doing so the ### stand for the total number of items that are listed for a specific description. Ensure that you insert a space between the closing parenthesis and the number and the line break at the end of the line.

 

Note that on each individual line the descriptions and the date is separated with a comma and a space!

 

6. Save and close the file “Outlook.hol” or “Outlook.txt”.

 

 

 

Provide user-defined dates

 

When you adapted the file “Outlook.hol” or “Outlook.txt” – as already mentioned – with your important appointments, others can also view the file and then insert the customized dates in their calendar.

 

Proceed as follows, to provide the file for others:

 

- Send an E-Mail message which mentions the custom file with the holidays dates as an attachment.

 

Or:

 

- Deposit the file in a publicly accessible location or on a shared drive on the network where other users can copy the file.

 

Recipients of your custom file “Outlook.hol” or “Outlook.txt” copy the file in the path, of the original file.

 

 

 

Add user-defined dates to your calendar

 

This works as follows:

 

1. Open your Outlook.

 

2. Choose this sequence of commands: Tools/Options/Preferences and Calendar options

 

3. Click on Calendar options and there on “Add holidays”.

 

 

Note: Even if don´t want to add new holidays, use the function “Add holidays” for in this case business dates = holidays.

 

4. Select the check box next to the name you are using for the event and then click “OK”.

 

Events which are of no concern for you and your calendar documents get removed as follows:

 

1. In the calendar while using the menu view click on “Arrange” point to “Current view” and then click “Events”.

 

2. Select the event or the holiday you want to remove.

 

3. Click the icon “Delete” in the standard toolbar.

 

 

 

Talk with your Outlook

 

If you create a task or an appointment Outlook automatically sets the current date in place of the due date for the event. Usually you must mark the day of the event manually or through the Outlook popup calendar.
Few users know that Outlook is accommodating when you enter the date for an appointment and allows a colloquial input of the date. For example, you learn that a shipment should be made in three weeks”.

 

Rather than now look up the appropriate date in the calendar, just click to the date field and type: in 3 weeks.

 

Once you leave this field with the tab key, Outlook uses automatically the correct date. The same principle works also with the following commands:

 

-day after tomorrow
- tomorrow
- next week
- in 2 months
- next Saturday
- in a year.

 

If no other unit of measure is specified, days are used by default in Outlook as measurement.

 

 

 

Discretion desired – How appointments in Outlook really remain confidential

 

When you add a new appointment to the Outlook calendar, it is by default not marked as private. If you have deblocked your calendar, anyone can read the dates. When you enter a medical date or a job interview, everyone can read this content also. However, if you want that colleagues only see that you are out of the office, you must mark your appointment as private.
To change the date form from official to private activate the check box “Private”.

 

 

 

Private appointments – by default

 

If you don´t want to deblock most of your appointments for others, then make your appointments and dates “Private” by default in Outlook.

 

Only when you remove the check mark in the check box before “Private” other cannot look at your appointments. This requires the following steps:

 

1. Select Tools/Forms and then click “Design a form”.

 

2. Choose “appointment” and then click “Open”.

 

3. Select the check box “Private” at the bottom of the window.

 

4. Click in the standard toolbar “Publish form”.

 

5. Enter a name for the new appointment in the text – such as “Privat appointment” – and then click “Publish”.

 

6. Close the design form for dates, without saving changes to the form.

 

7. Click on menu, and then choose “Go to” after that click on “Folder list”.

 

8. Click with the right mouse button on the file “Calendar” and then click “Properties”.

 

9. Select the name of the form you have already created in step 5 and then click “OK”.

 

 

Note: Tagging objects as “Private” does not prevent that others (administrators) have access to the details for an appointment. To make sure that others have no access to your private objects, you must grant no read permission for the calendar, contacts and tasks. A better method to prevent that other people can look at your private appointments is to create the dates in a separate calendar. Additional calendars cannot be shared.

 

 

 

No problem with the transfer – send dates in the correct format

 

You want to offer colleagues, customers or visitors the opportunity to take important dates directly from the website into their Outlook calendar by mouse click?
The solution: Provide the dates in iCalender (ICS) or vCalender format (.vcs) on the website.

 

How to store dates in the iCalender-or vCalender format:

 

1. Create or open the relevant date in the calendar.

 

2. In the menu “File” click “Save under”.

 

Run one of the following options:

 

- To save the date in the iCalender format, click the field “file type to iCalender format (*.ics)”.

 

-To save the date in the vCalender format, click the field “file type to vCalender format (*.vcs)”.

 

When you send an ICS or VCS file now via E-Mail or put it to a site on your homepage, a double-click on the ICS or VCS file will transfer the date automatically in the Outlook calendar, if the calendar program allows this standard.