Using Views

Outlook's default view on the calendar is a Day/Week/Month grid. Most people only ever use this view because it's a familiar format to everyone. When you want to view a shared calendar side-by-side with your calendar, you must use a Day/Week/Month view.

Outlook also has predefined views for Table views. The Table views are handy when you want to see a list of appointments. One advantage of a Table view is that the view is printable, with the fields shown on the screen included in the printout. You can also select and copy a Table view, and then paste it in any other document (see Figure 11.16).

Figure 11.16. When using a Table view, you can select rows and then copy and paste them into other documents. The Group By Box is visible at the top of the Calendar pane.

This view uses two automatic formatting rules; both use advanced filter options. One rule colors all appointments with a start date between 1/1/2003 and 2/1/2003 blue. The other rule colors all items in the Birthday category and with a recurrence pattern that contains "June, July, August, September" in red.

Table fields don't support the colored labels, but you can use automatic formatting with views to colorize items in a Table view.

Look for more information on using views in Hour 3, "Navigating the Outlook Interface."

Did you know you that you can copy the data shown on the screen when you use a Table view? Select the rows you want to copy, press Ctrl+C to copy them, and then paste the information in any other program from Notepad to Word or Excel. All visible fields are copied using a tab-delimited format.