Tuesday 26 June 2007

Keep your Outlook calendar clean and tidy

A Reminder is a Zero-Duration appointment

2 years ago I had a "Calendar Collapse". Let me explain. I have a memory
like Swiss cheese, so I use my Outlook calendar a lot. I put all my meetings
in there, but also little reminders like "Call pharmacy and order vitamins",
"Post letter for Charles" or "Buy eggplants on the way home". This works so
well, that my calendar became cluttered with reminders. One day my boss
called and asked me if I had 1 hour or so for him. I opened my Outlook
calendar and ... I was lost in the jungle of reminders.
In order to avoid such embarrassing situations I came up with the "clean and
tidy calendar". It's easy:
1) Assign 0 minutes duration to all appointments that are nothing more than
reminders. Therefore I created a special button in Outlook that calls the
following Macro.
2) Create a new view on your Outlook calendar called "Duration > 0" that
displays only appointments with a duration > 0. This view will show you all
your important meetings and hide the little reminders.

How to create a Zero Duration filter?
  • Go to Outlook Calendar
  • Go to View/Arrange by/Current View/Define Views
  • Click on "New"
  • Name it "Duration > 0"
  • choose Type of View "Day/Week/Month", press OK
  • Click on "Filter"
  • Go to the Advanced Tab
  • Click on "Field"
  • Choose "Date/Time Fields/Duration"
  • Under "Condition" select "is more than"
  • Under "Value" type "0"
  • Click on "Add to List"
  • press OK twice
  • press "Apply view"

How to create a custom button for your reminders?

2 comments:

Peggy Duncan helps you spend less time working but get more done. said...

This is a terrific tip. You're so good at explaining things and suggesting not only a feature, but how a person can use it to manage their time.

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