Managing Your Microsoft Outlook 2010 Calendar

There’s nothing better to keep you organised than a central scheduling calendar tool that keeps all your appointments in one place. The MS Outlook 2010 calendar allows you to add multiple diaries and is linked to your email and your contacts so you can easily stay on top of everything. Read on for our top basic calendar managing tips.

1 Adding a calendar / viewing multiple calendars

Adding multiple calendars means you can see the activities of your team members or your boss providing their calendar is shared. To access the calendar, click the ‘Calendar’ button in the bottom left-hand side of the screen. Next click ‘Schedule View’ on the tool bar and you will see the option to ‘Add a calendar’ with a text box next to it in the bottom of the view area. Typing in the name of the person whose calendar you want to add will start Outlook searching your contacts list for them. Add their calendar to show it under ‘My Calendars’.

2 Editing the calendar view

You can use the check boxes under ‘My Calendars’ to edit which calendars you want to see. You can add as many calendars as required but the more you add the less detail you will see for each one. Around 5-6 is recommended as a comfortable number.

You can also create groups of calendars if, for example, you want to see the calendars of all your team members. Navigate to the ‘Manage Calendars’ group of the ‘Home’ tab and then click ‘Calendar Groups’. Click on the ‘Create New Calendar Group’ button, create a memorable name for the group, and save by clicking ‘OK’. You can then add calendars to the group from your contacts list.

3 Shared calendars

Calendars must be shared by the owner before they can be viewed. If you need to share your own calendar, just follow these steps. Click on the ‘Share Calendar’ button in the ‘Share’ group on the ‘Home’ tab. If you’re working in an office, you’ll usually just need to share your calendar with another Microsoft Exchange user so just type their name in the ‘To’ field of the sharing invitation. They will receive an email letting them know you’ve shared your calendar with them.

If you are trying to add/open someone else’s calendar that you don’t have permission for, you’ll get a prompt so you can contact them and ask them to share their calendar with you.

4 Personalizing your calendar

You may find it easier to take in all the calendar information if you personalize the colours and fonts to your taste. You can change the background colour of all calendars by navigating to the ‘Options’ area in the ‘File’ menu. Then click ‘Calendar’ and choose your display options. If you just want to change the colour for a single calendar, select the desired colour from the ‘Colour’ group in the ‘View’ menu. For fonts, navigate to the ‘Current View’ group in the ‘View’ tab and click on ‘View Settings’ then ‘Others Settings’. You can then change the font family, size, style and colour as you would in an MS Word document.

Simon Calder

Chris “Simon” Calder was working as a Project Manager in IT for one of Los Angeles’ most prestigious cultural institutions, LACMA. He taught himself to use Microsoft Project from a giant textbook and hated every moment of it. Online learning was in its infancy then, but he spotted an opportunity and made an online MS Project course - the rest, as they say, is history!