Essential Meetings and Calendar Tips: Outlook 2013

Aside from the place view, send and receive email, Outlook is a great calendar-based organisation tool. You can use it to schedule meetings and organise your day – at work and at home. Here are some essential meetings and calendar tips for Outlook 2013.

Drag and drop between email and calendar

In Outlook you can drag and drop between the different parts of the software. It is a great time saver. For example drag an email on to the Calendar Icon to create an appointment with the detail from the email in the body. Drag an appointment to the Mail Icon to create an email with the detail of the appointment in the body.

Drag an email to the calendar

Figure 10 – drag email to calendar to create an appointment

Drag the email and drop it on the Calendar Shortcut

New appointment is created

Figure 11- New appointment is created

A new appointment is created ready for you to add the date and time.
When you have finished click Save and Close.

Drag a calendar appointment to mail

Figure 12- drag appointment to email to create an email with the details of the appointment

Drag an appointment from the calendar to the Mail Icon

New email created

Figure 13- new email created

A new email is created ready for you to address – you can add more detail to the body should you need to.

Essential Meetings and Calendar Tip: Sneak peek

Sneak peek is my own terminology. If you hover over the Calendar, People or Task Icons you get to peak into what is there. Handy for quick access to favourite people or to the day’s agenda.

Hover over calendar

Figure 14- Peek into the calendar

1. Hover the mouse over the Calendar Icon in the navigation pane
2. A preview of your upcoming appointments pops up with a month to view calendar
3. Click on any day in the calendar to see what is going on that day

Click the Dock the Peek Icon top right to dock the Peek view on the right of the screen in its own task pane.

Dock the peek

Figure 15- dock the calendar peek in the task pane.

The calendar in this case docks itself on the right in its own task pane.

Hover over people

Figure 16- peek at People
Hover the mouse over the People shortcut and get a list of favourite people. If the person you want is not in the list, you can search for them from the Search People box at the top.

You can also Dock the Peek on the Task Pane on the right of the screen by clicking on the Dock Peek Icon top right.

People docked

Figure 17- dock the people peek in the task pane

As I had already docked the calendar – people are now directly underneath.

Hover over tasks

Figure 18- have a peek at the tasks

Hover the mouse over the Tasks shortcut to see a list of upcoming tasks.

This too can be docked by clicking the Dock Peek Icon.

Tasks docked

Figure 19- dock tasks as well

Having docked the calendar and people Peeks first, Outlook puts the tasks at the bottom. However, the Peeks will appear in whichever order you dock them in.
Hopefully, the above essential meetings and calendar tips have shown you how you can use Outlook 2013 to organise your time at work and schedule meetings. The sneak peek is also a neat little trick so make sure to use it. Don’t forget to check out the blog article “Essential Guide for Outlook 2013 Virgins“.

You might also be interested in our Word 2013 and Excel 2013 blog articles such as “Best Word 2013 tricks: Understanding the Review Tab” and “How to quickly create a chart in Excel“.
Good luck with your projects!