Calendar Preferences Basics
March 7 2005 03:00:00 PM
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I think one of the most misunderstood features
of Lotus Notes is the Calendar and Scheduling system, or C&S.
I'm going to dedicate the next few blog entries to helping you understand
more about how you can personalize Notes C&S to work best for you.
It all begins with your mail file's "Preferences" Dialog
box. You should understand the options available here very well,
and I'm going to help by stepping you through the various setting.
To get to the Preferences, open your mail file to the Calendar view, and from the Notes Action Bar, click on the "Tools" action, then select "Preferences". (Note: you can also access the Tools menu from either the Action Bar in the Inbox, or from the Notes menus via Actions - Tools)
Your mail file's Preferences dialog box is divided into three main tabs: Mail, Calendar & To Do, and Access & Delegation. Click on Calendar & To Do. You will then see several second level tabs, such as Basics, Display, Scheduling, etc. Today we'll look at the Basics tab. There are four things you can configure here:
Let's begin with the first two preferences under "Defaults for New Calendar Entries". "Double-clicking on a time-slot in Calendar creates a" and "Duration of a new Appointment or Meeting".
If you did not know that you can double-click on your calendar to create a new entry, than there is an additional "Notes Tip" for you! To do this, move your mouse cursor over a time where no calendar entry currently exists, and double click. For example, the image below shows double-clicking on 10:00am EST
This creates a new calendar document, with the date and start time filled in, matching where you double clicked. Notice, the calendar entry type is "Meeting" and it is 60 minutes long. That is because these are the values configured in the Preferences dialog box.
Say you create more Appointments than Meetings, just change the preference! If you want entries to be 30 minutes by default instead of 60, change the preference! Of course you can manually change any of the values, these settings just affect what they default to when a calendar entry is first composed. They are intended to save you time.
The third preference, "Anniversaries Repeat For" can be seen in action by creating an Anniversary, and clicking on "Repeats..." then you will see that 10 years (or whatever value you have as the default) is selected.
Finally, the Personal Categories field allows you to enter choices that you can choose from when you "Categorize" a calendar entry. These can be as simple as "Personal" vs. "Work" or as granular as creating a category for each project you work on.
That concludes today's tour of the "Calendar - Basics" preferences. In my next blog entry I will cover the preferences on the "Calendar - Display" tab.
To get to the Preferences, open your mail file to the Calendar view, and from the Notes Action Bar, click on the "Tools" action, then select "Preferences". (Note: you can also access the Tools menu from either the Action Bar in the Inbox, or from the Notes menus via Actions - Tools)
Your mail file's Preferences dialog box is divided into three main tabs: Mail, Calendar & To Do, and Access & Delegation. Click on Calendar & To Do. You will then see several second level tabs, such as Basics, Display, Scheduling, etc. Today we'll look at the Basics tab. There are four things you can configure here:
Let's begin with the first two preferences under "Defaults for New Calendar Entries". "Double-clicking on a time-slot in Calendar creates a" and "Duration of a new Appointment or Meeting".
If you did not know that you can double-click on your calendar to create a new entry, than there is an additional "Notes Tip" for you! To do this, move your mouse cursor over a time where no calendar entry currently exists, and double click. For example, the image below shows double-clicking on 10:00am EST
This creates a new calendar document, with the date and start time filled in, matching where you double clicked. Notice, the calendar entry type is "Meeting" and it is 60 minutes long. That is because these are the values configured in the Preferences dialog box.
Say you create more Appointments than Meetings, just change the preference! If you want entries to be 30 minutes by default instead of 60, change the preference! Of course you can manually change any of the values, these settings just affect what they default to when a calendar entry is first composed. They are intended to save you time.
The third preference, "Anniversaries Repeat For" can be seen in action by creating an Anniversary, and clicking on "Repeats..." then you will see that 10 years (or whatever value you have as the default) is selected.
Finally, the Personal Categories field allows you to enter choices that you can choose from when you "Categorize" a calendar entry. These can be as simple as "Personal" vs. "Work" or as granular as creating a category for each project you work on.
That concludes today's tour of the "Calendar - Basics" preferences. In my next blog entry I will cover the preferences on the "Calendar - Display" tab.
