Outlook calendars allow you to create appointments, events, and meetings with others. You can have multiple calendars for different purposes, import calendars from other email providers and services like sports teams or professional organizations.
Create appointments, meetings, and events
Appointments, meetings, and events share a number of similarities. All have a start and end date and time, a subject, and a location. You can create recurring appointments, meetings, and events.
Appointments are blocks of time you can mark as free, busy, tentative, out of the office, or working elsewhere.
Events are just like appointments, except by default, they last at least one complete day.
Meetings are appointments or events with other attendees.
From your Calendar folder, select New Appointment, New Meeting, or click New Items and choose All Day Event to get started. For more information, see Create or schedule an appointment, meeting, or event.
Create additional calendars
You can create additional calendars in Outlook to keep certain categories of appointments, meetings, and events separate from others. For example, if you use Outlook for business purposes, create a second calendar for personal appointments. You can add calendars for sports teams and other professional organizations or import those events into your main calendar.
To create an additional calendar, navigate to a calendar folder. On the left side of the screen, right-click My Calendars. Then select Add Calendar. You can specify a name and location for your new calendar. Once you click OK, the new calendar folder will appear next to your existing calendar folder. For more information, see Create additional calendars.
Add an Internet calendar or import events from an .ics file
Many professional organizations, including sports teams and clubs allow you to download a file that you can use to add a series of appointments or events to an existing calendar. For example, you can import all of the games for a particular baseball or football team.
To subscribe to an internet calendar, download a calendar file with an .ics extension. Double-click the file you downloaded and say Yes if Outlook asks you if you'd like to import or subscribe to the calendar. for more information, see Introduction to publishing Internet Calendars.
Add people to meetings
If you create a meeting and later want to add another attendee, simply open the meeting from your calendar and add the attendee to the To line or from the Scheduling Assistant. Then select Send Update to send the meeting request to the new attendee.
If you want to add an attendee to a meeting someone else created, you can forward the meeting. When the person who receives your forwarded meeting receives the request in their inbox, it will appear to come from the meeting organizer. In addition, the meeting organizer will receive a notice that you forwarded the meeting to the attendee. You cannot add a person to a meeting via the Bcc field.
Note: If you want to let someone know about a meeting, but not invite them, simply drag the meeting request from your calendar to the Mail icon on the lower left side of Outlook. This opens an email with information about the meeting that you can send out. Note that this email doesn't add the recipient(s) to the meeting, and it only contains meeting information such as date, time, subject, and agenda.
Create a recurring appointment, meeting, or event
To make an appointment, meeting, or event recurring, when you create the calendar item, select the Recurrence button on the Ribbon. Outlook offers you a wide variety of recurrence options.
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Daily: Use this option to create a meeting every day or every X days (where X is any number between 1 and 999). You can also select every weekday.
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Weekly: Use this option to create a meeting that happens on a specific day or days each X weeks (where X is any number between 1 and 99). For example, if you want to create a meeting that happens every other Monday, check the box for Monday and enter 2 in the Recur every [ ] week(s) box.
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Monthly: Use this option to create a meeting that happens on a specific day of each month or every few months. You can also select options like the first Wednesday of each month, the second Thursday of every other month, or the last Monday of every three months.
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Yearly: Use this option to create appointments that recur on a specific day each year, for example a birthday or anniversary, or on a specific day of a month, for example the third Thursday of November.
For more information about recurring appointments, meetings, and events, see Make a meeting recurring.
