Accessing the Calendar
To get started, look for the Calendar Icon in the lower left corner of the Outlook Window. Click this icon to access your calendars.
Calendar Views
When viewing your calendars, you can switch between five different views:
- Day will show you calendar items only for a single day, divided into hours.
- Work Week displays Monday through Friday side by side, divided into hours.
- Week is the same as Work Week view, but it displays all seven days of the week, Sunday through Saturday.
- Month displays every day in a 7 x 5 grid, showing all of the current month and potentially some of the previous or next month.
- Schedule View displays your calendars as a schedule table, with each day divided into hours as columns instead of rows. Calendars are also displayed stacked on top of one another in this view, instead of side-by-side.
Creating Appointments
There are two ways to create an Outlook calendar appointment; either click the calendar directly at the time you want to schedule the appointment or click the New Appointment button in the upper left corner of the Outlook window.
Click to Create an Appointment
In Day, Work Week, Week, or Schedule view, click the calendar at the time you want to create an appointment and start typing. Hit the Enter key on your keyboard when you’re done, and your appointment will be created. If you need to edit any details for the appointment, simply double click its entry in the calendar to open it and make the necessary changes. Note that in Month view, you can still do this, but you will need to edit the appointment afterwards to specify the time.
New Appointment
To create a calendar event from scratch, click the New Appointment button in the Ribbon. The button can be found in the upper left corner of the Outlook window. Enter the necessary information for your event, particularly the date and time; by default, the event will be scheduled for the current day as an all-day event. Once you have entered the necessary details, click Save & Close to create the event.
Creating Meetings
Converting Appointments
You can convert any appointment into a meeting by clicking on the appointment’s entry in the calendar and then clicking Invite Attendees in the Ribbon.
Note that for recurring appointments, you will need to choose whether or not you want to invite attendees to just the single occurrence of the appointment or every appointment in the entire series.
New Meeting
You can also create a meeting from scratch, similarly to an appointment. Simply click New Meeting in the upper left corner of the window, next to New Appointment.
Inviting Attendees
Whether you are editing an appointment or creating a new meeting from scratch, add the people you want to invite in the Required and Optional lines. Fill these out the same way you would the To and Cc lines when composing an email.
Forwarding an Appointment or Meeting
You can forward any item on a calendar by right clicking it and then clicking Forward from the menu. Add your recipients to the To, Cc, or Bcc lines, then click Send. Recipients will be able to add the event to their calendars. If the event is a meeting, they will be added as attendees.
Working with Multiple Calendars
Calendar List Overview
Your calendars and calendars that others have shared with you will appear in the left-hand sidebar. The calendars in this list are divided into multiple groups.
- My Calendars lists any calendars that belong to you. These can include your personal calendar that belongs to your mailbox, any calendars belonging to shared mailboxes(Note, these aren't TEAM email inboxes) you are a part of, or any calendars you have created.
- Other Calendars displays calendars that are shared in Exchange itself or by some other process, but not a person.
- Shared Calendars displays calendars that other people have shared with you directly.
- All Group Calendars displays calendars from Microsoft 365 Groups. (These will be Calendars associated with your Team Emails/SharePoints)
Please note that one or more of these categories may not appear in your sidebar; this is normal. If no calendars are shared with you in a specific category, Outlook may not display it. If you think you should have a specific category of calendar, please contact the IT Helpdesk.
Opening and Creating Calendars
You can open shared calendars or create your own by clicking Add Calendar on the top Ribbon. Note that in some versions of Outlook, this is labeled Open Calendar instead.
When you click Add Calendar, you will have a number of options from the menu that pops up. Most options in this list will let you open shared calendars, while one option will let you create your own.
Opening Shared Calendars
- From Address Book will let you choose people and mailboxes by name. If you have permission to view these calendars, you will be able to add them to your calendar view in Outlook. If you do not have permission, you will be prompted to request permission from the calendar’s owner.
- From Room List will let you select from pre-configured conference room calendars. Note that we don’t make extensive use of this feature; at the time of writing, there is only one calendar available.
- From Internet will let you add any calendar that is publicly shared online. You will need to provide the URL of the calendar to add it.
- Open Shared Calendar lets you enter the name of a person or mailbox to add the calendar of. You can click ‘Name’ to search your address book. As with From Address Book above, you will either need permission ahead of time or to request permission in order to actually add a calendar like this.
Create New Blank Calendar
Clicking Create New Blank Calendar from the Add Calendar menu will prompt you to enter a name for your calendar and choose a location. It is recommended that you only specify the name and leave the location up to Outlook; this will make it easier to keep track of the calendar as you use it.
Once you’ve created your calendar, it will appear under My Calendars on the left-hand sidebar.
To delete a calendar you’ve created, right click on its name in the left-hand sidebar and then click Delete.
Sharing Calendars
You can share any calendar listed under My Calendars in the left-hand sidebar. To do so, click Share Calendar in the top Ribbon. It’s located right next to Add Calendar.
From the menu that pops up, click the calendar you want to share. As noted above, you will only be able to choose from calendars you have ownership of, so only your main calendar or ones you’ve created will be available.
In the new window that pops up, click Add.
In the Add Users window, choose the people you want to share your calendar with. Add them to the list by double clicking their names, then click OK when done.
Back in the original window, click Apply, then OK to save your changes.
When you share a calendar with someone, it should appear under Other Calendars in their Outlook automatically.
Displaying or Hiding Calendars
You can use the checkbox next to any calendar’s name in the list to show or hide it. When the box is checked, the calendar will be displayed, and when it’s unchecked, the calendar will be hidden. You can also hide a calendar after its shown by clicking the X next to its name in the calendar view.
Changing How Calendars are Displayed
By default, any calendars you enable will appear separately. In Day, Work Week, Week, and Month view, calendars will be displayed side-by-side. In Schedule View, calendars will be stacked vertically. In any of the side-by-side views, your personal calendar will always be displayed on the far-left side of the screen. You can turn any additional calendars you enable into overlays of your personal calendar by clicking the arrow to the left side of the calendar’s tab:
This will display the events from both calendars in the same space, which lets you enable multiple calendars while still keeping things easy to read. Please note that it’s only possible to add calendars as overlays to your main calendar; you can’t combine multiple additional or shared calendars into one in this way.
To make things clearer in this view, you can change a calendar’s color by right clicking on its name and selecting Color, then clicking the color you want that calendar’s events to be. You can change a calendar’s color whether it is an overlay or not.
If you want to put a calendar currently displayed as an overlay back to being on its own, you can click the arrow again to switch it back to side-by-side mode.
