Did you know: Secret Calendar View in Outlook

Calendar can be seen as Day, Week, Work Week or Month.There is another secret calendar view which I just discovered. It is very useful in specific circumstances …

Estimated reading time 2 min.

Outlook Calendar Views

Work week excludes weekends. Weekend can be defined in File – Options – Calendar.

We know this already. But there is more …

Calendar on the left pane

On the left side of the calendar, two months are shown if you are on a cusp. It highlights the days covered by the current view. For example this is the week view shown in the calendar.

Light blue background shows days covered in the current view. Dark blue shows Today. Dates in BOLD have some appointment during that day (note that All Day Events do not make the day bold).

How to select another week in the same month

Sounds like a stupid question. Most of us will use these arrows at the top of the calendar to navigate weeks.

Of course it works. But that calendar on the left side is a faster way to navigate. For example I wanted to move to the last week of September, I just have to click on ANY day in that week. It understands that the current view is weekly and therefore it will
auto-select the week. A nice touch.

But that is not what we are discussing here.

The need for Secret Calendar View

Suppose I have some events on four days of September – 10,16,20,25. I have lot of work to do on these days. It is a packed schedule. I want to manage it carefully.

The problem is these dates are in different weeks. I can go to weekly view one by one, but in every week I am only interested in a particular date – not the entire week.

Similarly if I go to daily view, I can see a single day but I am interested in seeing FOUR discreet days.

Useful if possible. Of course it is possible.

Ctrl Click on desired days

I am sure you have figured it out already.

Now change the view to daily view.

Click on the first day – say 10th.

Then press CTRL key and keep clicking on additional days. That’s it.

You can choose any number of such days. Of course, depending upon the screen size, too many selections will make it too crowded to be of any practical use.

Suppose you want to plan for the first event and then just copy paste the schedule to other days – this is the best way you can have.

Brilliant – is it not? But wait there is more here.

Notice that next to Aug 10 – 25 there is a left and right arrow. Remember this is an ad-hoc selection of non-contiguous dates. Ideally these arrows should not be there because regular navigation makes sense only with days, weeks , months. But the arrows are still there. Why? Is it a bug or it means something?

Of course it means something. The great Office team thinks of everything – however rare the situation would be – and they are not lazy to leave it alone. They provide for it.

This is what makes Office a the greatest product.

Now if I click on the right arrow – this is what happens.

Another click on the right arrow…

Did you get what it is doing? It starts with the next day and then repeats the pattern. Initially we had dates 10, 16, 20, 25 so the difference was 6, 4, 5. It is repeating that pattern.

Try more

While selecting multiple items the initial view is important. Try different combinations and see how flexible this is.