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Outlook supports more than one calendar at a time. If you use Outlook to handle both business & personal scheduling, having two separate calendars is ideal, as it allows you to keep the two halves of your life separate. And if your life is really complicated, thanks to Outlook's ability to have numerous calendars, you have great flexibility for separating things in the way that makes the most sense to you.

Creating a New Calendar

To create a new Calendar, follow these steps:

1. Starting in Calendar view, click File, then, New, then Calendar. The Create New Folder dialog box appears.
2. Enter the new Calendar's name. Accept all the other default options to create your new Calendar in the existing Calendar folder.
3. Click OK. The new Calendar should now be visible in the My Calendars section of the Navigation Pane.

Telling Outlook Which Calendars to Display

Telling Outlook which Calendar or Calendars you want it to display is easy. Just set the checkbox next to the name of each Calendar you want to be able to see right now, and clear the checkbox if you want that Calendar hidden. If you select more than one Calendar, Outlook will display them all at once.

There are two unique ways Outlook can display multiple Calendars, and if three or more Calendars are visible, you can choose any combination of them to suit your needs. Outlook can display Calendars side-by-side or one overlaid on top of the other. The overlaid view was added with Outlook 2007 and can be quite helpful at times.

In the side-by-side view, the Calendars appear next to each other, much as they would if you laid two printed calendars side by side on the kitchen table. In this view, it is easy to read each Calendar by itself, but comparing two or more Calendars is hard since you need to keep looking back and forth between them. This can lead to more mistakes.

To picture the overlaid view, imagine that each Calendar was printed on a transparent sheet, and you've stacked the sheets on top of each other. They each show the same period of time in exactly the same place, with all the information from each Calendar visible at the same time. Because they are physically in the same place, when the Calendars have overlapping appointments it's easy to see. The stacking effect makes it easy to spot scheduling conflicts or open times in all the Calendars. That said, with all the information stacked up the way it is in overlaid view, this view can be confusing, especially if one or more of your Calendars is crowded.

And that's the basic information you need to know to create & view multiple Calendars.

Learning how to create and view multiple Calendars is just one of the topics covered in Lesson 6 of the 6-week online course, Introduction to Outlook 2007. There we talk about how to work with multiple Calendars, along with all other major aspects of using Calendars in Outlook. If strengthening your skills with Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 makes sense to you in these uncertain economic times, and you like the idea of a structured class with the ability to interact with your instructor, I strongly suggest you visit http://IntroToOutlook2007.info to learn more about the course.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - Using More Than One Calendar in Microsoft Office Outlook 2007