Hey everyone, Kevin here. Today I want to show you my favorite top 14 tips and tricks in the Outlook
calendar. There are lots of good ones that are going to help you save time. If you want to jump
around this video, feel free to use the timestamps down below. All right let's jump on the PC.
Tip #1. I can use natural language to set the meeting start time in Outlook. Let's say that I
have a co-worker who wants to meet, I don't know, in seven weeks. To figure that out,
I'd have to click on the calendar icon and here I have to count forward seven weeks. Now was it
the 25th or was it the first, I lost track, so I'd have to go back and count it again.
Instead, I could let Outlook do the heavy lifting for me. Here I'll highlight this
date and I'll simply type in in seven weeks. Then I'll hit enter and Outlook determines
what that date is for me. Now, along with that, I could also type in something like, hey, let's meet
the second Monday in July, then I'll hit enter, and it looks like that's July 12. When I click
on the calendar icon, here I can confirm that July 12th is in fact the second Monday in July.
I could also set different holidays. Let's say I want to know, hey, what about Christmas?
Let's meet on Christmas. When I hit enter, here it figures out that it's December 25th,
so it's pretty smart in figuring out what these dates are. But before you think it's all knowing;
it doesn't get every date right. I don't know why, but here if I type in something like Thanksgiving
and hit enter, I get this ugly error message. It might be because Thanksgiving falls on different
days every year, but I do know that it's the last Thursday in November, so here I could type
in last Thursday and let's type in November, hit enter, and it looks like it's 11/25/2021.
Tip #2. You can use the date navigator to view your calendar in whatever way you want to view it.
Now right now, I'm in the week view of my calendar, and if I go up above,
there are a few different predefined views. I can view just the individual day, the work week,
the week, the month, and there's even a scheduled view, but what if I want to see even more time,
or what if I just want to see some specific dates? Let's first look over at the date navigator over
here on the left-hand side. So, right now, I'm currently viewing the month view, and so I see
a little bit of April and a little bit of May. If I want to see more months coming up, here I could
drag this and here now I see three months. Here I could even drag this area and I could pull it
out and here I could see half a year all in one view. Now with all these different views here,
especially the month view, I just see the full month. What if I just want to see,
let's say two weeks on my calendar? So maybe this week and the upcoming week. I can go over here,
and right over on the left-hand side of the weeks, my cursor changes and here I could highlight this
week and I could click and drag down to cover two weeks. So now I could just limit my view to
two weeks, or even here, I could highlight three and then I could see three, so I could select what
time period I want to see by dragging my mouse. Now let's say let me jump into the day view here.
Let's say someone wants to schedule a meeting with me and they give me a few different options. Maybe
they say hey, I can meet on the 14th, the 16th, or the 29th. Does 3:00 PM on any of those days work?
Now typically I'd probably click into the 14th, and the 16th, and I go through day-by-day
trying to see which one works the best. Instead, I can view all of these dates at
the same time. Right now, I'm on the 14th and I'll press the CTRL key and click on the 16th,
and I'll click on the 29th, and so now you see I have those three days all side-by-side, so I
can look at my calendar and say oh, 3 PM, well, that works for me on the 16th or on the 29th.
Tip #3. You can reply to an e-mail thread with a meeting, and it’ll preserve all of the contacts
from the e-mail thread. Here I have an e-mail message from Patty, and this is probably not a
topic that I want to just e-mail back and forth on. Instead, I want to set up a meeting. Here
I have this e-mail message selected. Right up on top in the home tab within the respond category,
I see the option to reply with a meeting. I can also press the shortcut key, CTRL + ALT,
and R. Let's click on this. This opens up a new e-mail message and you'll see a few things here.
For the title, it pulled in the title of the e-mail thread, it also pulled in Patty. She was
on the to line, so she's a required attendee. If anyone was on the CC line, they'd be included as
an optional attendee. When I look down below, it automatically turns it into a Teams meeting,
and if I scroll down, it preserves all of the content of the message. This makes it a
lot easier to set up a meeting, especially if you want to discuss an e-mail thread.
Tip #4 and this is similar to the previous tip where we set up a meeting,
but instead with this one, we're going to set up an appointment. Right here,
I received an e-mail from Nestor and he keeps bugging me about investing in Bitcoin.
It looks like he's made a pretty substantial amount of money. Now he keeps telling me that
I'm going to miss the train on this, and so maybe I should set aside some time where I can
investigate if it makes sense for me. To set up an appointment, I can click on this e-mail message,
and I can drag and drop it down to the calendar icon. Once I hover over, I'll release. This opens
up a new appointment, and it pulls in the subject of the e-mail. It also pulls in all
of the context. All I need to do now is select a date and a time and my appointment is ready to go.
Tip #5. You can very easily recreate a meeting on your calendar. Tomorrow, we have a new cookie
brainstorming session coming up and we just have an hour set aside for this. It's probably not
going to be enough time to come up with some new amazing cookie recipes, so I want to make sure
I set up a subsequent meeting. Now I could go in and set up a whole new meeting and invite all the
same people, provide all the same context, or you could simply click on this meeting,
press CTRL and then drag over and I now have a new meeting. Now it's not formalized yet.
I need to click in and send it to all of the meeting participants. Here I've clicked into
the meeting and then I'll click on send and that meeting is now formalized. That was pretty easy.
Tip #6. I can change the time scale that's shown within Outlook. By default, when you look at the
calendar here, it shows the 30-minute increments. But what if I want more granularity or maybe less
granularity? I can come over to the left-hand side where I see the time scale. I can right click,
and I can change it to any one of these values here. So, let's say I want to set up some
45-minute meetings. Here I'll change the scale to 15 minutes. Here now you see a lot more details
and I could highlight a 45-minute slot right here. If I want to change back, I simply right click,
and here I could switch it back to the default of 30 minutes. Tip #7. You can very easily show
multiple time zones on your Outlook calendar. One of my designers at the Kevin Cookie Company,
Grady, works and lives in Hawaii, and he's requested that we meet at 10:00 AM on Friday.
Now he's thinking about his local time zone, so I have to do the math to convert it. Luckily,
Outlook can help me with that. Here, once again, I'll go over to the left-hand side where I see the
time. I can right click and there's an option to change the time zone. Let's click on this.
This opens up calendar settings, and here in the time zone section, I can see that my default time
zone is currently set to Seattle, and here I can add up to three time zones total. So,
let me click on this one right here with Hawaii and it's currently set to the Hawaii time zone,
but I could choose whatever time zone I want. Next, I'll click on OK. Now on my calendar,
I can see the Hawaii time zones alongside Seattle, and it looks like 10:00 AM is 1:00 PM in Seattle,
so I could click here and then I could set up the meeting. As an alternative, you can also
go into a meeting invitation and remember, Grady, who's in Hawaii, he said he wants to meet at 10:00
AM. Right over here, I can check this box for time zones and here I can set it to the Hawaiian
time zone, so there's 10:00 AM, and then on my calendar, it’ll show up as 1:00 PM Pacific tike.
Tip #8. You can view other calendars side-by-side with your own calendar, and along with that,
you could even overlay these other calendars on top of your calendar. Right here, we can see my
upcoming week at the Kevin Cookie Company, and we've also created a company-wide calendar that
includes all of the different cookie holidays throughout the world. Over on the left-hand side,
I see that other calendar, so I'll click on this one and now I can see my calendar right next to
all of the cookie holidays. Right up here, you'll see that we're celebrating Philippines National
Cookie Day tomorrow. Right now, I see them side-by-side. If I want to see it overlaid on top
of my calendar, I could simply come up here, click on this arrow icon, and right now, I can see the
company calendar on top of my calendar. If I want to create an event on the cookie holiday calendar,
I can simply select this one as the active calendar, and now I can create an event,
but if I want to create an event on my own calendar, I can come up here,
click on calendar. This is now the active calendar, and I can create an event here.
To remove the overlay, I can click on this arrow, and this will push it so it's side-by-side again,
and once I'm done looking at this calendar, I can click on the X up here. Now you might be
wondering, well, how do I get other calendars in here, so I can see them side-by-side or so
I could overlay them? Well right up here on top, you can add additional calendars.
You can add other people's calendars from your organization. You could even find calendars on
the Internet. Maybe your favorite sports team has a calendar, or you could even create a new blank
calendar and then you can share it with others, so you can work together on a shared calendar.
Tip #9. You can open up a new window for your calendar, so you can look at your calendar
alongside your e-mail. Right now, I have my calendar open, but if I want to jump to my e-mail,
then I lose context of my calendar. Instead, I can leave my calendar open
all the time as well. Right down here in the bottom left-hand corner, I can right click
on the calendar and there's the option to open in new window. Let's click on this.
This now opens up another instance of my calendar. I could put this on a different monitor,
or I could put it over to one side of my screen, and over here, I can jump into my
mail and if I open up this again, now I have my mail and my calendar both open at the same time.
Tip #10. You can use color to better visualize your calendar. Now right now,
all of my upcoming meetings and appointments are just in the default or the standard blue.
Here if I right click on the calendar, I can change the default color. Maybe I want to go
with just a calming green, but maybe I have some meetings coming up that really need my attention.
Here for example, Patty scheduled a meeting with me to talk about the New York flagship store
issues, and before this meeting, I need to make sure I think of some excuses or sorry rather
rationale for why we're having these different issues. I could use categories to do this. To set
up categories, click on the meeting item and this opens up the meeting ribbon up on top. Over here,
I see different categories. I can go with one of these predefined categories, or I could even set
up my own. I'll click on all categories. Right here, once again, I see all of the different
categories. I could create my own or I could even rename some of these. I'll just use one of these
existing categories, the yellow category. One thing that's really neat is over on the right-hand
side, I can also set a shortcut key to toggle this category on. I'll go with CTRL + F2 and then click
on OK. Back within the calendar now with this item selected, I can press CTRL + F2 and that’ll toggle
it yellow. So, this way I definitely won't miss that this meeting is coming up, so this way I'll
have some time to prepare. If I press CTRL + F2 again, that will toggle off the color.
Tip #11. I can change my work hours in Outlook. If we look over on my calendar on the left-hand side,
you'll see that right here it's a grayish color, but as soon as we hit 8:00 AM all the way through
5:00 PM, it's a little bit lighter. This indicates that these are my core working hours, and once
again, past 5:00 PM, it's a little bit darker. When someone goes to schedule a meeting with me,
they'll see that these are my core working hours. Now, if you know me at the Kevin Cookie Company
8 to 5 is a really long day. I want to cut down on when people schedule meetings with me.
Over here, I'll right click on my calendar and then I'll go down to calendar options.
Within calendar options, I can adjust my work hours and 8 to 5, once again,
that's a really long day. Let me instead shift that. Maybe, let's say I start at 10:00 AM
and I should probably be out by about, let's say, 2:00 PM.
You know, I'll work really efficiently in between those four hours. I'll leave the days as is, but I
could adjust those as well. Once I'm all done, I'll click on OK. Back within my calendar now,
you'll see that my core hours now show up between 10:00 and 2:00, so hopefully this influences when
people schedule meetings with me. Hopefully this lightens my meeting load. We'll see what happens.
Tip #12. You can bring even more power into your Outlook calendar by using add-ins.
Back in the mail view on the home tab all the way over on the right-hand side, you have the option
to get third party add-ins. Let's click on this. This opens up a prompt where you can add hundreds
of different add-ins into Microsoft Outlook. You might be wondering, well, are there any good ones
for calendaring? One of my favorites is called FindTime. Here I'll click on this. With FindTime,
if you're having difficulty meeting with others, maybe they have a really busy calendar,
maybe they work in a different company and you can't see their free busy data. With FindTime,
you can propose a few times, and then others can vote on it, so it makes it really easy to find
the time that works for everyone. Another reason I also love this add-in, when I worked at Microsoft,
I worked on the incubation team that launched FindTime. So, you should definitely give it a try.
Tip #13. You can set meetings to automatically start late or end early. When you look at my
calendar here, I have a lot of meetings that just run up into the next meeting and there's
no buffer in between. There's no time to go to the bathroom or grab a drink of water.
Luckily, we can change this using the settings. Here I'll click on the calendar, right click,
and let's go down to calendar options. Within calendar options right near the top, here I
can toggle this on. I can set a meeting to either start late or end early. I'll go with end early.
Right down here for shorter meetings if it's less than an hour, I can set it to
5 minutes. Here I'll go with that and maybe if the meeting's longer than let's say an hour,
I can have it end 10 minutes early. I'll select 10 minutes and then click on OK.
Here I'll try to schedule an hour meeting now. Let me click on new meeting request.
Here within the new meeting request, you'll see that the end time is automatically truncated by 10
minutes, so we're going to go from 2:00 to 2:50. So finally, people have some time for a bio break.
Tip #14, and unfortunately, this is the very last tip of today, but this is a good one. I'm going
to show you how you can make it easier to look at your calendar, and no, I'm not going to show
you how you can just magically make meetings disappear. Instead, I'm going to show you how
you can use dark mode. Here within the calendar, simply right click on your calendar and go down
to calendar options. Within calendar options, over on the left-hand side, click on general and right
down here, you have the option to change the Office theme. This will change the Office theme
across all of your different Office apps. Right here, I'll click black and then I'll click on OK.
And look at this. The calendar already looks better. It's a little bit easier on my eyes,
and maybe in the future, I'll come up with a tip where maybe I could cut down on your meeting
load. All right, if you learned some new tips that you're going to put to use, please give this video
a thumbs up. To see more videos like this, be sure to hit that subscribe button. Also, if you want to
see me cover any other topics on this channel, leave a note down below. All right, well, that's
all I had for you today. I hope you enjoyed, and as always, I hope to see you next time, bye.