Preparing to be away

Marking the time as Free makes it invisible for other when scheduling meetings...

Erik — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 13:17:53 GMT

If you mark the meeting as Free it has the drawback of the "vacation" not being visible in Group Schedules for example.

That is; people could (try to) schedule a meeting with you even though you are out-of-office.

So possibly you should set the time as "Out of Office" instead?

re: Preparing to be away

Riaz — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:11:30 GMT

I am assuming the mini calendar only shows if you have Exchange 2007? I have Oulook 2007 but only Exchange 2003 and I do not see htose screenshots..

re: Preparing to be away

JimC — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:10:54 GMT

My Out of Office does not have the Start time/End time and Inside/Outside Organization options. I am on Outlook 2007 w/Exchange server. Is this something that would be disabled on the server? Any way I can get it?

Thanks,

Jim

re: Preparing to be away

Valeri — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 18:59:54 GMT

This trick about the vacations in the calendar is sooooo great! Thank you! I sent it to everyone in the office. We'll always do that from now on!

re: Preparing to be away

Melissa MacBeth — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 21:34:29 GMT

Thanks for the comments!

Eric - if you mark it it as Out of Office, then the people who receive the meeting will be marked as Out of Office. On your own calendar, you should add a separate appointment that is marked as Out of Office.

Riaz - the mini calendar is typed out by hand - it is not a feature of Outlook.

JimC - the dates, and inside and outside of your organization is a feature of Outlook 2007 with Exchange *2007*. If you have Outlook 2007 running against an older version of Exchange, you will not see that feature.

-Melissa

re: Preparing to be away

ChrisRomp — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 21:59:31 GMT

One other thing: TURN OFF THE REMINDER.

I love getting those notifications 18 hours before -- or even better -- 15 mins before midnight about someone's travel or vacation starting, especially with my WinMo phone beeping next to me in the middle of the night.

Great post, Outlook team! I sent this out to my extended team and I think it'll be getting forwarded around.

re: Preparing to be away

PowerShellTeam — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:04:05 GMT

That in-line calendar looks handy -- here's a PowerShell script that saves you from doing it by hand: http://www.leeholmes.com/blog/ShowingCalendarsInYourOOFMessages.aspx

re: Preparing to be away

Jude-G — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 21:06:53 GMT

We go a step further in our office for extended times away. In addition to setting the out-of-office assistant, we have established a vacation rule which forwards our e-mails to someone else in the department. The rule includes the forwarding and also moving the original to a folder marked "sent to....". Although this is not for everyone, it helps in our office where we share responsibilities.

re: Preparing to be away

afreitas@lacapra.com — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 19:53:40 GMT

This is a very handy feature however I am having some trouble getting it working correctly. When I send a meeting invitation using the process in the blog my colleagues are asked to accept or decline the meeting request. I have confirmed that I am turning responses off. Any thoughts on what I am doing wrong? Is there a difference between a meeting request and scheduling an appointment?