Windows 7 : Using Windows Live Calendar (part 3) - Scheduling Appointments and Meetings & Viewing Agendas and Creating To-Do Lists

5. Scheduling Appointments and Meetings

Windows Live Calendar can help you track appointments, meetings, and other commitments for yourself and any calendars to which you’ve subscribed. All these events can have a subject and location associated with them. On the master calendar, the subject is shown first, followed by the location in parentheses. When you create an event, you can specify start and end times or you can specify that an event lasts all day. Windows Live Calendar also allows you to specify whether events are recurring and to add reminders to events so that you are notified a specified amount of time prior to an event.

NOTE

Windows Live Calendar doesn’t try to distinguish between meetings, appointments, or other types of commitments and simply refers to them all as events. This is the same approach used by most calendaring and scheduling programs. This is because with appointments, meetings, and other types of commitments, you must be somewhere at a particular time to meet someone or do something, and programmatically it doesn’t make sense to create separate sets of features that do essentially the same thing.

You can create an event by following these steps:

1. In Windows Live Calendar, click New or press Ctrl-Shift-E. This opens the New Event dialog box, shown in Figure 6.

2. In the Subject text box, type a subject for the event.

3. In the Location text box, type the location for the event.

4. Use the Start and End options to set the start and end times for the event. Or for an all-day event, select the “All day” checkbox.

5. If the event is not for your default, primary calendar, click in the Select a Calendar list and select the calendar where the event should be created. You can create events only on calendars to which you have read/write access.

6. Click in the “Select Availability” list and choose whether the event should be shown as busy, free, tentative or away.

7. If the event should repeat, use the Recurrence list to select the interval at which the event repeats, such as Weekly, Monthly, or Yearly. If you want to use a recurrence schedule other than the default, select the Custom option. You can then set the appointment to repeat every nth day, week, month, or year.

8. To have Windows Live Mail remind you prior to the appointment, use the Reminder list options to set the amount of time prior to the appointment to display a reminder. For example, if you select 1 hour, Windows Live Mail will remind you 1 hour before the appointment.

9. Click Save & Close to create the event.

Figure 6. Creating your appointment

If you want to remove an event from a unsubscribed calendar, you can do so by right-clicking the event and selecting Delete. You cannot delete events from subscribed calendars. If you no longer want to see events from a subscribed calendar, clear the related checkbox under Calendars or delete the subscribed calendar.

When you try to delete a recurring event, you’ll be given the opportunity to delete the series, delete the selected occurrence, or cancel the deletion. The related dialog box is shown in Figure 7.

Figure 7. Deleting a recurring event

6. Viewing Agendas and Creating To-Do Lists

When you are logged in to the Windows Live service, you have several extra features for your calendars. One of the calendar extras is an agenda, which is displayed when you select the Agenda tab. As Figure 8 shows, an agenda is a handy list of upcoming events from all your personal and subscribed calendars.

Another handy calendar extra is the to-do list, which is displayed when you select the “To-do list” tab. The Windows Live service can help you manage to-do lists for your personal and group calendars. As Figure 9 shows, the to-do list shows upcoming tasks that need to be completed by their title, due date, and status.

Figure 8. Viewing your agenda

Figure 9. Creating to-do lists

In the to-do list, upcoming tasks are listed under the Upcoming heading and completed tasks are listed under the Done heading. Tasks have three basic states:

Not started

A task that has not yet been started

In progress

A task that you are working on but has not yet been completed

Done

A completed task

When you create a task, you can specify a priority to indicate the task’s relative importance. You can set start and due dates. You can also add reminders so that you are notified a specified amount of time prior to a task’s expected due date.

NOTE

Each task is color-coded to the calendar to which it relates and can also have a priority indicator to the left due date. High-priority tasks are shown with an exclamation point. Low-priority tasks are shown with a down arrow. Normal priority tasks don’t have a priority indicator.

You can create a task by following these steps:

1. When you are working with calendars while signed in to the Windows Live service, select the “To-do list” tab.

2. Click the New link on the toolbar. This displays the “Add a to-do” dialog box, shown in Figure 10.

3. In the What text box, type a title for the task.

4. If the task is not for your default, primary calendar, click in the Calendar list and select the calendar with which the task should be associated.

5. If desired, use the Priority list to set the task’s relative priority as High, Normal, or Low.

6. Use the “Due date” options to specify the date when the task must be completed. Optionally, you can specify a time the task is due.

7. To set the task status, set a reminder or add a description, click the “Add more details” link. You’ll then be able to use the Status list to set the task’s status, the Send Reminder list to specify when a reminder should be sent before the due date, and add a description of the tasks.

8. Click Save to add the task to your to-do list.

Figure 10. Configuring your task

Any uncompleted tasks created on your personal calendar or other calendars are displayed under the Upcoming heading. You can change a task’s status by clicking the current status and selecting a different status. When you mark a task as done, it is displayed under the Done heading. However, by default, completed tasks are hidden and you must click the Done heading to retrieve the list of completed tasks.

When you complete tasks, you may want to delete them. You can delete a task by clicking the related Delete button. You can delete all completed tasks by clicking the “Delete all” link and then clicking OK when prompted to confirm.