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Overview
Calendar is the calendar and scheduling component of Outlook that is fully integrated with email, contacts, and other features. By using the calendar, you can create appointments, organize meetings, view group schedules, share calendars, and much more.
Accessing your Outlook Calendar
To access your calendar, Open Outlook and click on the calendar icon at the bottom left of the window.
Once your calendar has opened, you should be able to view your five-day work week (Monday-Friday). This view can be changed by selecting the view options from the toolbar.
Creating an Appointment
Appointments are activities that you schedule in your calendar that do not involve inviting other people. To create an appointment on your calendar:
- Select the Appointment button at the top left, or right click on your calendar and select New Appointment.
- Enter a Subject, Location, Start time/date, and End time/date.
- Select Save & Close to save your appointment.
Creating an All-Day Event
An event is an activity that lasts 24 hours or longer. Examples of an event would be a vacation day or sporting event. To create an all-day event on your calendar:
- Select the New Items button at the top left and choose All-Day Event, or right click on your calendar and select New All-Day Event.
- Enter a description in the Subject box, then add a Location.
- Use the calendar boxes next to Starts and Ends to select the Date/Time range of your event.
- Use the Show As list to indicate to others if you will be Free, Busy, or Out of Office.
- Click Save & Close to save your changes.
Scheduling Meetings
You can send a meeting request to one or more people. Outlook tracks who accepts the requests and reserves time on your calendar for the meeting. When you create a meeting request, you can add attachments, set a location, and choose use the Scheduling Assistant to help choose the best time for your meeting.
To create a meeting on your calendar:
- Select the Meeting button at the top left, or right click on your calendar and select New Meeting.
- Add a meeting subject, start time, end time, and location.
- You can add your attendees in one of two ways:
- Select the “To…” button and search/add your recipients.
- Select the Scheduling button to add attendees and view their schedules. In the Scheduling Assistant, click the Add New button to search/add your recipients. Click the icon next to the attendees name to mark that person as a Required Attendee or an Optional Attendee. Select the Appointment button to exit the Scheduling Assistant window.
Recurring Meetings
If you need to create Appointments, Events, or Meetings that occur on a regular basis, you can utilize the Recurrence button to have Outlook automatically create the calendar items for you. To make a meeting recurring:
- Create or select the meeting, then select the Recurrence button.
- Choose the options for the recurrence pattern you want, then click OK.
- Click Save & Close to save the changes.
Tracking your Meetings
Outlook offers the ability to track your meeting proposal responses to monitor who will be attending a meeting. To view the tracking status of your meeting:
- Open your calendar and double click on the meeting you wish to track.
- Click the Scheduling button.
- A new window should now appear, listing all the attendee’s and their role in the meeting, as well as their response status.
Private Meetings
Private meetings and appointments can be selected to hide some of the meeting details from others in your organization. This setting will make the appointment visible only to people who have read access to your calendar. To make a meeting or appointment private:
- Create or open the appointment or meeting that you want to make private.
- On the meeting or Appointment Tab, select the Private Button.
- Save or send your meeting for the change to take effect.
Responding to a Meeting Invitation
When you receive a meeting invitation in Outlook, you can respond to the meeting to accept, decline, or indicate that you are tentatively attending. Meeting invitations will come to your inbox like an email message, and will appear as events in your calendar that you need to respond to. To respond a meeting invite:
- Open the meeting invitation by double clicking on the invitation in your Inbox, or by double clicking the event on your calendar.
- From the ribbon, you can choose the following responses:
- Accept: You can attend the meeting; Outlook will put the meeting on your calendar.
- Tentative: You may be able to attend; Outlook will put the meeting on your calendar as tentative.
- Decline: You cannot attend; Outlook will not put the meeting on your calendar.
- Propose New Time: You can propose a new time to the meeting organizer; If you tentatively accept and propose a new time, Outlook will put the appointment on your calendar.
- Respond: Send an email to the meeting organizer; Outlook puts the meeting on your calendar as tentative and notes that your still need to respond.
- Once you select a response, choose one of the options from the drop down menu:
- Edit the Response before Sending: You can write a message to the meeting organizer to send along with your response (accepted, declined, etc.).
- Send the Response Now: Outlook will automatically send an email to the meeting organizer with your meeting response.
- Do not Send a Response: Outlook will record your meeting response in your calendar, but will not send an email with your response to the meeting organizer.
- Propose a New Time: If you chose “Propose New Time” as a meeting response, you can use the scheduling window to suggest a new meeting time for the organizer.
Sharing Calendars and Managing Calendar Permissions
To share your calendar with another person, you must first grant permissions for that person to view your calendar. To view and manage the permissions on your calendar:
- Open your Calendar, then click on the Calendar Permissions button toolbar at the top.
- Click on the Add button to search for and add the person you want to grant permissions to.
- Once the person has been added, select the person from the list and set the Permission Level using the drop-down menu. Each permission level is detailed below.
Owner: Allows full rights to the mailbox's (Calendar or Folder), including assigning permissions; it is recommended not to assign this role to anyone.
Publishing Editor: Create, read, edit, and delete all items; create subfolders.
Editor: Create, read, edit, and delete all items.
Publishing Author: Create and read items; create subfolders; edit and delete items created by the user.
Author: Create and read items; edit and delete items they've created.
Nonediting Author: Create and read items; delete items created by the user.
Reviewer: Read items.
Contributor: Create items.
Free/Busy time, subject, location: View the time, subject, and location of the appointment or meeting on your calendar.
Free/Busy time: Shows only as Free or Busy on your calendar. No details are provided.
None: No permissions are set for the selected user on the specified calendar or folder.
Opening Shared Calendars
You can open other people calendars in Outlook and view their details, based on the permission level you’ve been granted. To open a calendar in Outlook:
- Open Outlook and navigate to your Calendar.
- Select the Home tab on the toolbar, click on the Open Calendar button, then select From Address Book.
- Type the name of the person’s calendar you want to view, then double click on their name.
- Click OK to save the changes and add the calendar.
- You should now be able to see the persons calendar in your Shared Calendars, and can click the check box to view.
Note: Addition information for opening shared calendars in Outlook can be found in our Knowledge Base article.
Additional Information
Below are some links to additional documentation that may be helpful in using Outlook Calendars: