Microsoft Office Outlook Team Blog

Why don't you just add an option that says show today and next X days?

Another tip is to use ALT-9 or 8 when viewing the calendar.  This will change the view to a 9 or 8 day view.

This is kind of related...but it would be great if outlook allowed the selection of random days when creating appointments, like I have meeting ABC on 11/3, 11/5, 11/20, 11/21....

Yes nice, but come on, that's just a little gimmick.

I use the journal a lot for keeping track of the tasks I'm working on and maintaining a time record. Unfortunately the journal leaves a lot to be desired. You can use your categories to tag your tasks to various projects, but your options of generating reports are limited. The default type for a new entry is telephone call which for some reason is among the less often used choices (I use task most often). However there doesn't seem to be a way to link the tasks defined under tasks with the ones in the journal and the automatic recording of work is very crude. It could for example automatically record the time I'm spending on writing an E-Mail (not just when I receive an e-mail or send one, which only works part of the time and only with the main Exchange account, not with any extra IMAP/POP accounts that I have). Having tasks and being able to add hours to them and description of what has been done would improve the whole work managing part of Outlook a lot.

I would also like to be able to see how much hours I worked on a task and how much hours in a given category (project) in which week. I want to allocate a certain number of hours to the tasks I'm doing and then when I book my time to these tasks want to have the progress displayed. Does anybody ever use the "percent finished" in the tasks? It's not shown anywhere as completion status.

Currently when I want to do my statistic, I have to manually open all the entries from the last day and sum in my head the minutes having to deal with different time formats, e.g. 76 minutes, 1.1 hours to write them down in a book. I could use Excel for that, but I haven't had time to create a spreadsheet yet.

I want statistics after every week and upon request automatically, the whole journal can be made a lot more with some better integration.

I agree, a new view button for a week-type view of "next x days" would be very helpful. Google Calendar has this and I use it 95% of the time. They even let you customize how many days in the future--I use 4. MS could top Google and let us customize a view for x days in the future and x days in the past!

Great tip, but I find that when I select a specific range of weeks to view (in month view), I cannot "pin" that view so that it shows up the next time I return to calendar. The view flexibility is great--but seems to only offer a temporary view. Hope that makes sense....

It would be helpful to me to create a view of the whole year in Outlook or to see several months at once as another option for planning (Multi-Month Calendar View).

I'm more of a keyboard person so I do roughly the same thing by pressing Alt+7, which gives a week starting from today.

Isn't Alt+[number] the same thing David West is asking for?  Sounds like another existing feature that just needs to be better exposed :o)

Thanks for the link, however this solution is too contact oriented, also I'm not interested in generating money. I'm rather looking for something like a time recording solution, but without any billing features. I'm just an IT professional working on different projects in research/education business and would like to be able to view how much time I spend each day on which projects, which tasks I have to do and how much time I've already invested therein, how much time is left and track progress.

You may be right that I am trying to achieve this with the wrong tool, but I think the journal coupled with Outlook tasks has potential to do this. I'm using tasks and the calendar a lot, especially because they sync with my mobile phone, so I can keep track of what I have to do even when the computer is not near me.

I'd be interested to hear how the Outlook team uses the Outlook journal.

When I need to record my time against various project headings, I find the Outlook calendar most useful. I categorize activity such as pre-planned meetings against my various projects. Each week I 'back fill' and adjust my calendar using the Work Week view to make sure all project tasks time is recorded. A benefit of this approach is you can easily see unaccounted-for gaps and also make sure you do not double-record time - potentially a problem verging on fraud!

I then use a custom view containing the 'right' columns and rows and paste it onto my pre-supplied project accounting speadsheets.

(There are a less well-known calendar fields such as 'billing information' and 'mileage' you can also use).

Great tip! I've always struggled with the Friday/Monday view problem.

Any tricks for multiple outlook calendar synchronization with a single blackberry?

Responding to all those guys who want a logging tool that is a little more intelligent than the Journal....there would be a great place to look for the outlook team on "RescueTime". Its a neat little program that logs your computer use and sends it to someplace on the web to be categorized...you then can look and see how you are using your time....

This is NOT an alternative to the Journal right now....but the way it works is really cool, and is something like how the journal COULD work to make it more effective.

Just thought you guys might like some inspiration.

Mick

Don, you read my mind.  You're asking exactly the same thing that I'm looking for in Outlook.

I live in Outlook and use it not only book appointment in my future, but record what I have done in the past.  One annoying thing that I would love to solve is avoid having the appointment reminder pop up each time I enter an "appointment" in the past.  Can that be done?

Has anyone tried to UNDO a meeting cancellation?  I tried to reschedule a single occurrence of a recurring meeting - (at first) couldn't find a suitable new day/time - opted to cancel the occurrence -- THEN saw a possible new day/time.  Can a person get OUT of the Meeting Cancellation mode...to then reschedule?

As an enthusiast of the subject time management, I´ve already read a lot and tried to implement some alternatives to deal with this daily challenge. The modell that best suited for me works with importance levels and priorities for the tasks and appointments. Basically, the tasks/calendar events must be executed in order of importance and then priority. This way, it can be assured that the effort is applied in the best sequence to achieve desired goals. There´s an issue to apply this method that I didn´t solve yet. In order to plan the days, I schedule the tasks and events in such a way that a day (working time) has no more than 6 planned hours. Here comes the problem. As I schedule the tasks, I need to know how much hours are already planned for that day. That includes not only the tasks, but also the calendar events. In a nutshell, it would be optimal if Outlook summarized all the tasks and events in only one view and also summed up the planned hours for that day (e.g. similar to the “ count function” for the items in the group title of a view). Does anyone have a clue of how to implement this idea in a folder view (Outlook 2003)? Today I use an extra software to sum up my daily planned hours. And you know, this just kills the ergonomy. Thanks for your time, I´d be pleased for a feedback! Best Regards, Rafael.

Don -

with regard to not having yet nade a spreadsheet to add the figures up, it's a simple drag and drop to Excel.

Select the section of Journal you want to add (from a tbale view), drag to Excel, drop.  Sum the column that has the durations in it. Save or ditch the spreadsheet.  Approx. 6 seconds!

Faster than trying to add 72 and 11 and 35 in my head!

I like being able to see two works weeks at a time so this is great.  However, I'd also like to be able to print both work weeks on the same sheet of paper.  Does anyone know how to do this?

Great one, thanks for that.

Does any of you know how to get a view "today and the next 5 days" saved? Would save some clicking :-)