Creating a Meeting
1) First select the calendar function in Outlook.
2) You can either double click on the time slot you want to schedule the meeting or
3) Select “New” in the upper left hand corner.
4) Either way, the following screen will appear. Enter the appropriate Subject, Date and Time for the meeting. You will also need to select how you want the time to be viewed. Most often you will select “busy” when you are scheduling a meeting.
5) Next click on “Invite Attendees” on the top toolbar.
6) Click on “To” and you will receive a drop down menu that allows you to select attendees for the meeting.
**You can also add a message to your attendees in the white space under the meeting workspace.
7) Next, highlight the person’s name and then click on required or optional depending on whether or not you need them to attend the meeting or if it’s just a courtesy.
8) Now schedule a conference room by finding the appropriate room in the same dropdown list. After you have highlighted it, select the “Resources” button. Make sure you do this because it will reserve the space for you. Finally, click “Ok” to complete this function.
9) Next, select the scheduling tab, located next to the appointment tab. The outline bar that appears on the page is the 3pm time slot that you are proposing for the meeting. The blue bars indicate appointments that others have on their calendars. As you can see from this example, Brian has a previously scheduled appointment at 3pm. If he is required for your meeting then you will need to find a time that works for everyone. If your meeting time works, you can select “Send” in the upper left hand corner. If it’s not going to work you can make
date or time changes below until you find something that works for everyone. Finally, you can click “Send”.
To Change a Meeting
If you scheduled the meeting and decided to change it, you can send an update to the attendees. All you need to do is double click on the meeting from your calendar to open it. Once it’s open you will see the following screen. Just change the meeting time and click
“Send Update”. Again, you will probably want to check the scheduling tab to make sure the new time works for everyone.
To add comp time, flex or work items to your calendar.
From your calendar folder, click on new and then enter the subject, date and start time. This part is the same as scheduling a meeting with the exception of inviting attendees.
Please note:
When adding your Comp or Flex time, make sure to mark your time as “Out of Office”, not busy. This will allow for accurate reflection of your time when people are trying to schedule meetings with you. You can either select it as an all day event or just put the times 8am-5pm.
Also, when you are adding work items to your calendar (things you would mention on your activity summary) please mark the “Show Time As” free if it’s something that you could be interrupted for if a meeting needed to be scheduled. Only use the busy feature if you absolutely can’t be disturbed.
If you want to make a recurring appointment select the “Recurrence” button and determine the frequency of the meeting. You can also do this when you are scheduling a meeting.
Accepting a Meeting Notice
Below is a meeting notice that you could receive. You have a couple of options: Accept, Tentative or Decline.
Once you accept the meeting, it is automatically scheduled to your Outlook calendar and will show your time as busy. When you select tentative it marks the time on your calendar with lines through the time period to show that you are not sure yet. When you decline a meeting, as a courtesy it might be nice to send a note along with your response. A message will appear asking if you want to include comments with your response. You have the opportunity to select one of three options.
Creating a Distribution List
First click on your Contacts folder.
Next, select the arrow next to the “New” button in the upper left hand corner and click on “Distribution List.”
The screen below will appear and you will click on
“Find Names”.
You will type in the first name or last name of the person you are looking for. Once the person’s name appears, you will highlight the name and select “Add Recipient to Distribution List”.
Once you select “OK,” the screen below will appear. Now you can name your distribution list something that is easy to remember. In this case we named it Finance. When you go to send an e-mail to the finance group all you need to type in under “To” is Finance and it will be sent to the list below. These distribution lists are saved in your “Contacts” in outlook. If you need to update the list you can open it up from your Contacts to add or remove names.
Outlook Symbols
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