Outlook Calendar Features

Basic Calendar Features of Microsoft Outlook

• The purpose of this blog is to define the difference between Appointments, Meetings, and Events and to detail how to create them.
• Appointments are activities that you schedule in your calendar that don't involve inviting other people. You can set reminders for your appointments. You can also specify how your calendar appears to others by designating the time an appointment takes as busy, free, tentative, or out of office.
• You can schedule recurring appointments. You can view your appointments by day, week, or month. You can schedule an appointment in your own calendar and others can give you permission to schedule or make changes to appointments in their calendars. Appointments can also be made private.

Calendar Features: Meetings

• A meeting is an appointment you invite people to or reserve resources for (a meeting room for example). You can create and send meeting requests and reserve resources for face-to-face meetings or for online meetings. When you create a meeting, you identify the people to invite and the resources to reserve, and you choose a meeting time. Responses to your meeting request appear in your Inbox. You can also add people to an existing meeting or even reschedule a meeting.

Creating a Calendar Entry

• After you open Outlook, click the Calendar on the Navigation Pane (this used to be called the Outlook Bar in versions older than Office 2003). You must do this in order to set Outlook's focus on the calendar component.
•  To create a new entry, click on the New Entry icon in the upper right hand corner of the calendar, or you can click on File > New > Appointment, or Meeting Request, or Live Meeting, or Conference Call, etc.
• Enter a subject and location.
• Select a start date and time, as well as an end date and time.
• Click on the Scheduling button to add attendees, if appropriate.
• Set the Reminder time if you want a reminder to pop up. The default is 15 minutes but you can change it from the drop down menu.
• If you wish to set a recurrence for this entry, choose the recurrence button at this time.
• You may also set the appointment as busy, free, tentative, or out of the office.
• You may add additional details about the meeting in the blank pane under the time/date of the meeting.

Inviting Attendees

• Click on the Scheduling button to invite attendees or stay on the main pane and click on the To button. 
• You can either type the names or email aliases in or click on the Add Others button at the bottom of the pane.
• Under certain circumstances (an Exchange server environment which is normally seen in businesses and schools, very rarely for the average home user), you may see their schedule to know if they're available.
• When finished, click Save and Close.  
• When attendees receive the invitation if they choose to accept it, the meeting is automatically scheduled for them and a reminder will pop up at the correct time. When they accept, you will automatically receive notification of acceptance.