Advanced Calendar Tips and Tricks
Once you've mastered the basics of Calendar, check out these tips and tricks to keep you organized and more efficient.
Find/add calendars
Not sure if your colleagues are busy? Add their calendar to your Calendars list and their schedule is always one click away. To add a calendar, enter your colleague's email address in the 'Add a friend's calendar' box (it's in the 'Other Calendars' section on the left) and their calendar will automatically appear in your list.
Reserve a conference room
When you click Check guest and resource availability from the event details page, you can:
Add attendees to see when everyone is available (adding guests here will automatically be reflected in the Guests field in the event details).
Select a new time (either using the When box at the top, or by selecting a new time slot in the grid).
Click Find next available time, to have Calendar automatically suggest the next time all attendees are free (up to two weeks in the future).
Find a list of conference rooms or search for an available room in the Where box (be sure to click on Add to reserve the room for the event.
Create calendars for your team or project
Keep track of team events or project deadlines in one place. Creating a separate calendar reduces the clutter in your main calendar, helps you juggle multiple aspects of your job, and allows others to share the organizing duties.
To create a new calendar:
Click the Create link in the 'My Calendars' section on the left to get started.
Fill in the calendar details.
Invite team members to collaborate by giving them access to view events on the calendar, create and edit events, and share the calendar with others.
View multiple time zones
If you often collaborate with people in another time zone, spare yourself the headache of calculating the time difference by adding another time zone to your main calendar grid.
To enable this feature, click Settings and select Show an additional time zone.
Customize your calendar view
You can create a custom view to control exactly how much of your calendar you want to see at once.
Just click Settings and select your custom view time interval, and set your defailt view to Custom view.
Create a Task List
Note: This feature is only available on certain domains. Contact your domain administrator if you don't see the Tasks link and you'd like to use this feature.
Create to-do lists and stay on track by using Tasks in Calendar. To get started, click Tasks on the left size of your calendar.
Your task list appears to the right of your calendar grid. Add items by clicking the + icon on the bottom of the gadget. You can also create a new task by pressing Enter.
A few things to keep in mind:
Tasks that have due dates will automatically appear on your calendar in the All Day event section.
To create a task with a due date directly in the calendar grid, click on an empty space in Month view or in the All Day section and select the Task option.
To attach a due date to an existing task, click the right arrow next to the task in question in the Task list. Then, click on the calendar icon to select a date.
To modify a task's date, simply drag the task to a new date (as you would with a calendar event).
To mark a task as complete from within Calendar, click on the checkbox next to the task.