Windows Live Calendar lets you schedule events in one or
more calendars, send information about these events to contacts, and share
your calendar with others—all from one easy-to-use application. Microsoft
designed Windows Live Calendar to be used with Windows Live Mail and
Windows Live Contacts, allowing you to share and coordinate calendar
information with family and friends.1. Getting to Know Windows Live Calendar
One of Windows Live Calendar’s most useful features is the ability
to create multiple calendars for different people or different purposes.
Because calendars and their respective events are color-coded, you can
quickly and easily differentiate between one person’s appointments and
commitments and another’s. Windows Live Calendar also makes it easy for
you to access any available calendars and for you to allow others to
access your calendars. If you want to access someone else’s calendar,
you can ask that person to publish the calendar so that you can
subscribe to it. If you want others to be able to access your calendar,
you can publish your calendar as a shared calendar.
You can start Windows Live Calendar from within Windows Live Mail
by clicking the Calendar button in the left pane. As Figure 1 shows, Windows Live Calendar has a
navigation pane and a work pane. On the left, the Navigation pane shows
the current month and the available calendars. The main window in the
center displays the current view of the active calendar.
You can use the toolbar to navigate the calendar, change views,
and perform essential tasks. From left to right, the buttons on the
toolbar are:
- New
Creates a new event in the selected calendar.
- Send in e-mail
Sends a select event to one or more contacts as an email
message.
- Delete
Deletes a selected event.
- View
Provides options that set the calendar to the Day, Week, or
Month view.
- Print
Prints the Day, Week, or Month view of the dates you select
as the start and end dates under Print Range.
When you are working with the Date section of the Navigation pane,
you can use the Month view of the calendar to select individual dates to
view in the main window. Using the Previous Month and Next Month buttons
on the calendar, you can navigate to previous and next months. Other
techniques to navigate the calendar are as follows:
While viewing a particular month, you can navigate to previous
or next months by clicking the month and year entry to display the
12 months of the year. You can then select any month to view by
clicking it.
While viewing the 12 months of the year, you can change the
year by clicking the Previous Year or Next Year button.
At any time, you can click the “Go to today” link to go back
to the current date.
In Windows Live Calendar, the Day, Work Week, Week, and Month
views in the main window show appointments and meetings associated with
all the calendars you’ve created or to which you’ve subscribed. When you
are working with the Calendars section of the Navigation pane, you can
select the calendar you want to work with to make it the active calendar
for when you are scheduling events or setting calendar
properties.
Any calendar events you create, modify or delete in the related
desktop program are automatically created, modified, or deleted in your
contacts in the Windows Live service and vice versa. Synchronization
occurs when Windows Live Mail checks for new messages, which occurs
every 30 minutes by default. When you are working with the Mail view in
Windows Live Mail, you can manually synchronize all email, calendar and
contact data with the Windows Live Service by clicking the Sync button
or by clicking the Sync Options button and then selecting Everything
(Ctrl-F5).
You can change the synchronization options by following these
steps:
In Windows Live Mail, click the Menus button on the toolbar,
and then click Options.
On the General tab, ensure the “Check for new messages every”
checkbox is selected and then specify the desired interval.
Click OK to save your settings.
2. Creating and Using Calendars
The true power of Windows Live Calendar is its capacity
for creating and managing multiple calendars. If you would like to have
separate calendars for work and play, or perhaps you would like to
manage the calendars for each of your family members and see them all
together at a glance to avoid conflicts, you can do this by creating
multiple calendars. Because each calendar has a separate color code, it
is easy to tell which appointments, meetings, and commitments are
related to which calendar.
To create a new calendar, all you need to do is click the “Add
calendar” link or click the Options button to the right of the New
button on the toolbar and then select Calendar. Alternatively, you can
press Ctrl-Shift-D to create a new calendar. In the Add a Calendar
dialog box, shown in Figure 2, you can then set the
name of the new calendar and select a color for the calendar’s events.
You can also enter a description of the calendar and optionally make the
calendar your primary calendar.
When you create events, Windows Live Calendar adds them to the
active calendar by default. Calendars have two key properties that you
can manage: a title and an associated color. You can edit calendar
details by clicking the calendar name and then selecting
Properties.
When selecting a color to associate with a calendar’s events, use
a unique color for each calendar so that it is easy to distinguish the
owner or purpose in the master calendar. For example, you might want to
use red, blue, green, yellow, and orange as the colors for five
different calendars.
By default, items for all calendars are shown on the master
calendar. To hide a calendar’s items, clear the related checkbox. If you
later want to display the calendar’s items and tasks, select the related
checkbox. You also can hide the calendar’s items and hide the calendar’s
entry by clicking the calendar and selecting the “Hide this calendar
from list” option. To restore hidden calendars, click any available
calendar and then select the “Add hidden calendars to list”
option.
If you no longer need a calendar, you can permanently delete the
calendar and all related events. To delete the calendar, click it, and
then select Delete from the menu that pops up. When prompted to confirm
that you want to delete the calendar, click Delete again.
