Creating a New Calendar

Create a new Calendar by following these steps:

1. Make sure you are in Calendar view and click File, then, New, then Calendar. The Create New Folder dialog box appears.
2. Enter the new Calendar’s name. Accept all the other default options to create your new Calendar in the existing Calendar folder.
3. Click OK. It will now appear in the My Calendars section of the Navigation Pane.

Telling Outlook Which Calendars to Display

Telling Outlook which Calendar or Calendars you want it to display is easy. Just set the checkbox for each Calendar you want to be able to see right now, and clear the checkbox if you want that Calendar hidden. If you select multiple Calendars, Outlook will display them all simultaneously.

Multiple Calendars can be displayed two ways, and if you have three or more Calendars visible at once, you can mix and match the two ways in whatever manner suits the needs of the moment. Outlook can display Calendars side-by-side or one overlaid on top of the other. The overlaid view is one of the new Calendar features introduced in Outlook 2007.

In the side-by-side view, the Calendars appear next to each other, much as they would if you laid two printed calendars side by side on the kitchen table. In this view, it is easy to read each Calendar by itself, but comparing two or more Calendars is hard since you need to keep looking back and forth between them. This can lead to more mistakes.

To picture the overlaid view, imagine that each Calendar was printed on a transparent sheet of plastic, and you’ve stacked the sheets on top of each other. They each show the exact same period of time in the same place, and you can see all the information from each ‘layer’ of Calendar. Because they are physically in the same place, when the Calendars have overlapping appointments it’s easy to see. This makes it easy to spot scheduling conflicts or open times in all the Calendars. That said, with all the information stacked up the way it is in overlaid view, this view can be confusing, especially if one or more of your Calendars is crowded.

There’s a lot more to working with multiple Calendars, but now you at least know how to create them and view them.

Creating and viewing multiple Calendars is just one of the things covered in the sixth lesson 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 skills with Outlook 2007 makes sense to you in these uncertain economic times, I strongly suggest you visit http://IntroToOutlook2007.info to learn more about the course.

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 appears with a different color trim to make it easier for you to tell them apart. Your main, or primary Calendar is always displayed on the left side of the Outlook window. The other Calendars (your secondary Calendars), are on the right.

To view Calendars overlaid, you begin by selecting 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 secondary Calendar’s name. 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 can have any combination of overlaid and side-by-side Calendars that you want. If you click 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, there are a few options you might want to adjust to adapt Outlook for your company’s workweek or your personal schedule and habits. Here’s an example. I am very much a morning person, and frequently begin my work day at 4:30 or 5:00 in the morning. On the other hand, I have some night owl friends who don’t start working until 10:00 in the morning or later. The Calendar can be adjusted to match these starting times and a variety of other individual schedule variations. Check it out:

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. This opens the Calendar Options dialog box.
3. Find the Calendar Work Week section of the Calendar Options dialog box. Specify your work week by checking the days you work. You can also set the First Day Of Week, First Week Of Year, Start Time, and End Time to meet your needs as well.
4. Click OK when you’re done setting these options.

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.

Working with multiple Calendars is just one of the topics covered in Lesson 6 of the 6-week online course, Introduction to Outlook 2007. In that lesson alone we cover all the major aspects of using Calendars in Outlook. If strengthening your skills with Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 makes sense to you in these uncertain economic times, I urge you to visit http://IntroToOutlook2007.info to learn more about the course.

Why should you choose Gmail? Well, there are lots of other free email accounts out there, for example Yahoo! Mail & Hotmail. But connecting them to Outlook for free is another story. Some Web-based email accounts are set up so you can view them using your Web browser, but they’re set up to prevent you from connecting to them with programs like Outlook. Other email accounts (Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail, for example) allow you to connect to them with Outlook, but they charge you a fee for the privilege. Their free versions won’t help you at all. There’s only a small number of Web-based email accounts that allow you to connect Outlook for free. Google’s Gmail is the biggest and best of this select group.

With Gmail, you get a massive amount of space (measured in Gb) of mail storage right on Google’s servers. It also provides powerful search capabilities (basically doing a Google search on your own email). Google supports the Gmail service with advertising, but you only see the ads when you use your Gmail account with your web browser, not when you use Outlook. This is definitely the free email service you want to use to connect to Outlook.

The steps required to make the Gmail Outlook connection are moderately difficult, but most people can make the connection on their own especially if they have access to someone more experienced should they get stuck. If you want to try setting up a Gmail account & connecting it to Outlook 2007, the instructions are posted here.

Configuring Gmail and Outlook to work together is just one of the topics covered in the first lesson of the 6-week online course, Introduction to Outlook 2007. If strengthening your skills with Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 makes sense to you in these uncertain economic times, and you like the idea of a structured class with the ability to interact with your instructor, I suggest you visit http://IntroToOutlook2007.info to learn more.

That said, please be aware that while Outlook makes it easy to work with electronic business cards, designing quality cards is a whole different story, and the province of the corporate marketing folks. This puts the art of designing quality electronic business cards outside the scope of this article. So we’ll talk only about how you create and use electronic business cards. It’s up to you, in compliance with corporate policy, to come up with a design you are proud of.

How to Create an Electronic Business Card

As soon as you create a new contact, Outlook automatically creates a very basic electronic business card to go with it. These cards are simply lists of the basic information you entered for that contact, such as their name and address, along with a copy of the contact’s picture (if you have one). What follows is a very basic set of instructions for creating more elaborate cards to that replace these basic default ones.

To create an electronic business card for a particular contact, follow this procedure:

1. Open the contact you want to work on. The current electronic business card for this contact appears on the right side of the contact window.
2. Right-click the current version of the card, then click Edit Business Card to open the Edit Business Card dialog box.
3. You’ll see numerous options and controls for editing the business card. Microsoft really made our lives easier here. They’ve included an image of the contact’s card that changes as you use the controls in this dialog box. This allows you to see the results of each change right away. That also means you can easily undo changes you don’t like and lets you freely experiment with different possibilities.
4. Once you have selected and formatted the fields you want to appear on the card, move over to the top of the Card Design section and work your way down each control, experimenting with different settings until you get a design that you like. If you have a particular picture you want to include on the card stored on your computer, click the Image button to insert it. Click Background to apply a background color to the card.
5. Repeat the previous two steps in any order to refine and tweak your card design until it’s exactly the way you want it. Click OK when you’re done designing.

Working with Your Electronic Business Card

Your new business card design will now be visible in Business Card view and whenever you attach it to a message you’re working on. To attach the card to a message, first position the cursor in the message at the location where you want the business card to appear. Then click Insert Business Card in the Include section of the ribbon while you’re editing the message. The card appears in the body of the message at the location specified by the cursor. The card is also attached to the message in .VCF format so the recipient can easily save it.

Learning how to work with electronic business cards is just one of the subjects covered in the fourth lesson of the 6-week online course, Introduction to Outlook 2007. If strengthening your Microsoft Office 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 strongly suggest you visit http://IntroToOutlook2007.info to see if the course is available through a school near you.

The Outlook 2007 To-Do Bar pulls together information from Outlook 2007′s Calendar and Tasks views making it simple to keep track of what you need to do. You used to have to check the different views to find this information, now it is right there where you can work with it almost instantly.

Every element in the To-Do Bar is live. That is, you can use the Date Navigator to control the Calendar, open and modify the appointments without leaving the current view, manage the list of tasks, even create new ones, again without leaving the current view.

Having the To-Do Bar available really reduces the jumping back and forth between views that was necessary in earlier versions of Outlook.

By default, the To-Do Bar appears as a pane to the right of every view. When the To-Do Bar is minimized, it appears as a narrow strip down the edge of the main Outlook window. When the bar is expanded, by default it shows the Date Navigator (a small calendar) at the top, your next three scheduled appointments in the middle, and a list of your tasks at the bottom. use the left and right arrows at the toop of the To-Do Bar to minimize or expand the bar.

Note: You can easily modify the To-Do Bar to change the way it displays information.

Actually working with the items in the To-Do Bar couldn’t be simpler:

• Click a Date navigator date to open the Calendar to that day.
• Double-click an appointment or task to open it.
• Type into the Type a new task box at the top of the task list to add one.
• Click the header of the task list to change the order in which tasks are displayed.

It doesn’t get much easier or more intuitive than that!

Having the things you need to do next easily visible wherever you are in Outlook is a significant benefit. I think you will quickly find the To-Do Bar to be one of the most useful new Outlook 2007 interface features.