Roll multiple calendars into one
Remember when you first transitioned from a paper daytimer to an electronic calendar-keeping device? Too often, you had an appointment on one but not the other. Depending on where you looked, appointments could slip through the cracks. Wouldn’t it have been nice to transfer the paper documents into an electronic format that combined and synchronized both at the click of a mouse?
Today, the challenge is to roll multiple electronic calendars into one, so that you can easily reference all pertinent calendar items in the same place—and not miss anything because it is on a different calendar.
This can be surprisingly easy—and FREE! While there are third-party solutions for sale, Microsoft users can do this with Outlook and the free SharePoint WSS version.
SharePoint Integrates with Outlook in calendars, contacts, tasks and RSS feeds. This allows you to synch various items from SharePoint to Outlook so that you can work on them in Outlook, even when offline.
Adding a SharePoint Calendar to Outlook
Any calendar in SharePoint can be quickly added to Outlook so that you can access it from your Outlook Calendars view as well as overlay it with other calendars (from SharePoint or Outlook) to view them as one calendar. Here’s how:
- Go to one of the site’s calendars in SharePoint
- In the menu bar above the calendar, click on the Actions button, then select Connect to Outlook.
- Click Yes when Outlook prompts you to connect to the Calendar.
You can now view the SharePoint calendar from the Outlook Calendars view. It will appear under your Other Calendars section of your Navigation panel in Outlook, so you can view them in the future by selecting the check box next to their name.
To view any number of calendars as one, check the boxes next to the desired calendars, then use the overlay options in Microsoft Outlook by clicking on the arrow on the calendar’s tab. This will overlay any opened calendars so you can view them as one.
With this solution, you can rest easy knowing your calendars are organized and complete.
Tags: Calendars, Microsoft Outlook, Outlook 2007
