Microsoft Outlook – Appointments and Events

Appointments and Events. 

The Calendar allows you to manage Appointments, Events and Meetings.

By default Outlook will enter your appointments into your personal calendar, if you have created additional calendars it is possible to specify which calendar will be used.

Calendar terminology: 

Appointments: Activities that you have entered into your diary for yourself (Doctor’s appointment, dinner date, visiting a client etc).

Events: Similar to an appointment but takes place for the entire day.

Scheduling an Appointment. 

1. Select the Appointment date

The Untitled Appointment Screen is displayed (See Elements of the Appointment Window below).  

2. Double click on the time slot.

Within the Untitled Appointment screen, enter the following details about the appointment. Subject, 

Location, Date, Time and notes about the appointment. 

Other optional settings can be set like reminders, which are detailed below. 

Elements of the Appointment Window. 

3. Save & Close: Save the appointment.

4. Subject: Enter a subject for the appointment, subject is displayed in the calendar when the appointment is saved and closed.

5. Location: Location of the appointment, once a location has been used it will be remembered by Outlook for use on other appointments.

6. Start & End: Enter or modify the start end dates for the appointment.

7. Time: Enter or modify the start and end times of the appointment.

8. All day Event: Selecting this option will change the appointment from an Appointment to Event.

9. Show as: When an appointment or meeting is entered a colour border can be selected, these colours indicate the following:

Blue -- Busy 

Blue Checker -- Tentative (pencil in) 

Mauve -- Out of office 

White -- Free (used when organising meetings, but not attending).  

10. Reminder: Don’t miss an appointment - have outlook to remind you about upcoming appointments.

11. Recurrences: Appointments can happened on a regular basis.

Select the recurrence pattern and click Ok.

12. Categorise: Select a category for the Appointment.

Enhances the presentation of the calendar as well as enhancing the grouping and searching capabilities.

13. Importance: Add an importance indicator to the appointment.

14. Private: When using outlook in the corporate environment, it may be possible for others to view your appointments, select the private feature so that others on the network can see you are busy, but cannot see what the appointment is about.

15. Spelling & Proofing: 

16. OneNote: Select the OneNote icon to copy the Meeting / Appointment details into OneNote.

Deleting an Appointment. 

Click on the appointment that you wish to delete, either click on the delete icon or press delete on the keyboard. 

Printing the Calendar. 

1. From the Outlook File menu select Print.

2. Select the required printer.

3. Choose the Print Style.

4. Select the time frame

(Print Range”)

5. Click on Preview to display the print output before printing if required.

6. Click Ok to Print.

Preview

 

Scheduling Meetings. 

When scheduling meeting the process is similar to entering an appointment, the difference is that you can choose to invite people to the meeting. 

1. Create an new appointment, detailing Subject, date etc.

2. Click on the Invite Attendees icon.

3. Click on the To icon to select the people you wish to invite to the meeting.

1. Select the attendees email addresses.

2. Select either Required or Optional. Required  - Must attend the meeting.

Optional   - Optional (do not have  to attend)

3. Click Ok.

The invitation is now ready to be sent. 

4. Click Send to send the meeting invitation.

The recipient receives the invitation in the for of an email message, which when opened can read the invitation details and respond using the following meeting icons along with a typed response. 

Responding to a Meeting Invitation. 

1. Open the email invitation.

2. Select one of the following.

Accept: Accept the meeting and enters the meeting details into your calendar. 

Tentative: Not sure, pencil in meeting appointment. 

Decline: Cannot attend the meeting. 

Propose New Time: Recipient wants to attend but would like to move the meeting to a different date or time.  

This will generate another email back to the meeting organiser requesting the proposed new date & time.  

The meeting organiser can accept or reject the new proposed date & time, if the Proposed details are accepted the meeting organiser will send an update email to the other recipients detailing the change and requesting them to respond again. 

Next choose if you wish to edit the response with an addition message. 

The default setting is to just send the response Accept etc. 

If you have selected Accept or Tentative the meeting details will have automatically been added to your calendar. 

The meeting organiser will receive an email detailing you response. 

Opening the Meeting Response. 

Open the email response. 

Response details. 

The response details can also be viewed in the calendar. 

Open the meeting in your calendar. 

Click on the Tracking icon. 

Tracking will display the status of the replies received. 

If the invitee replies by phone you can manually update the response in the Tracking screen

Click in the Response area, a drop-down arrow is displayed. 

Select the relevant response.

Cancel the Meeting. 

1. Open the meeting appointment.

2. Select the Cancel Meeting icon.

3. Send Cancellation icon is displayed. Once pressed an email will be send to all recipients to notify of the cancellation.

Using Scheduling. 

In this next example I have entered an appointment on my Calendar for the 24th April for Student1 and Student2 between 11am and 2pm. 

Before I send them a meeting invitation I wish to check to see if they are free at the time slot that I wish to hold the meeting. 

Scheduling allows me to view if they are free and also to amend my appointment if necessary. 

1. Open the appointment and select the Scheduling icon.

2. Click on Add Others, this will display the address list.

3. If between the green and red bars there is no coloured bar displayed for the attendees, this indicates they have no appointments scheduled.

4. If the attendees are busy between the desired times, select AutoPick, Outlook will automatically move the appointment to the next available date & time when all can make the appointment.

5. Amend the date & time if necessary.

Plan a Meeting. 

The purpose of Plan a meeting is to find a free slot for the attendees before you enter the details into you calendar. 

Once a free slot is found you can invite the attendees to the meeting. 

1. From the Actions menu select Plan a Meeting.

1. Add the proposed attendees.

2. Select the date & time for the meeting.

3. View if the attendees are free, if not use AutoPick or change the date & time.

4. Once you have chosen a date when all can make the meeting select the Make Meeting to start the meeting scheduling process.