With Windows Vista, I can now plan and manage my own activities, and I can coordinate the rest of my family’s activities, in a single calendar. Windows Calendar is built right into Windows Vista and offers automated integration features that make it the easiest calendar I’ve seen for groups of people to use. Of course, there are other calendar choices that may work well for you and your family. Outlook and Windows Live are two other great options, and both provide some of the same features listed here that make the Windows Vista built-in calendar so useful.
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Windows Vista
There are lots of cool things you can do with Windows Calendar. You can:
Create appointments, tasks, reminders, and priorities.
Review and compare multiple calendars.
Import information from calendar websites that use the iCalendar format.
Publish your own calendar to the web.
Send email appointments and invitations to friends and family directly from your calendar.
In this article, I’ll show you how to do all of these things.
Overview of Windows Calendar
I’ve tried a variety of methods to coordinate family activities—a whiteboard, a paper calendar, a personal digital assistant (PDA), and more. Microsoft Office Outlook is great, but I’ve found it more useful for my business activities than for trying to coordinate my family’s activities. When Windows Calendar in Windows Vista came along, I was thrilled.
That’s because Windows Calendar lets you set up multiple calendars, and then gives you the option of viewing one calendar at a time or comparing multiple calendars. Calendar setup is fast and easy; you just select different colors for each person. When compared side by side, this color feature makes it easy to see who’s doing what at any given time—a literal lifesaver for anyone who needs to manage a variety of schedules.
Image of Windows Calendar
With Windows Calendar, you can see tasks and appointments for multiple people in a single glance. Each color shown here (blue, pink, and yellow) represents a different person’s calendar. View larger image.
Set up and compare family calendars
I have set up a calendar for each person in my family, and the integration aspect of Windows Calendar lets me compare our day’s activities side by side—an immense help to me. Now, for example, when I need to know whether my husband can take our daughter to an activity, I just glance at the calendar to check his schedule. Setting up your calendar is very logical and simple.
Here’s how to create calendars for each person in your family in Windows Calendar:
Click the Start button in Windows Vista. Type Calendar in the Start Search box.
Under Programs, click Windows Calendar.
A calendar will open with the name of the person assigned to the computer. If the calendar that opened doesn’t have your name attached to it, that’s okay. Just follow the remaining steps to create a new calendar for you or anyone else in your family who needs one.
In Windows Calendar, click File, and then click New Calendar.
When the new calendar appears, type a name for it in the Calendars task pane on the left. Click Enter.
Note: All calendar names will appear in the Calendars task pane. Placing a check mark next to one allows you to see it along with other calendars. Remove a check mark and you won’t see the calendar.
Image of names in Windows Calendar
Choose the calendars that you would like to compare.
In the Details pane on the right, select the color that you want to use. This color will help identify various calendars quickly. If you can’t see the Details pane, click the View menu and then click Details Pane.
That’s it! Now you’re ready to create appointments and tasks. Click New Appointment or New Task in the toolbar and fill in the required information. When the details for tasks and appointments are filled in, the calendar will populate with the information in the appropriate color for the person involved.
Subscribe to web calendars
Now that most of the world has gone high tech, all sorts of organizations are placing calendars on the Internet. Sports teams post game dates, clubs post dates for upcoming activities, volunteer groups post events requiring participants—the list goes on and on. Placing calendars online reduces questions and confusion about upcoming activities and related locations, and this is a terrific help for group organizers who often juggle multiple responsibilities along with calendar duties.
If the iCalendar format (.ics) is used, you can subscribe to these calendars and set parameters for how often your personal Windows calendar is updated with new events from different groups. You can find a listing of calendars that can be subscribed to on the Windows Calendar website, or ask any groups that you’re a part of where their calendars are posted.
To subscribe to a calendar:
Open Windows Calendar, and click Subscribe on the toolbar.
Type the URL of the calendar you found, and click Next.
Image of subscribing to an online calendar in Windows Calendar
Subscribe to online calendars for automatic updates.
Select a name for the calendar, an update interval, and whether you want reminders and tasks included.
Click Finish.
You’ll start seeing your calendar updated according to the update intervals you established.
Publish your calendar to a website
If you volunteer for an organization or have a need for others outside your home to see your calendar, consider publishing it to the web. For example, let’s say you have three kids who are continually running from one activity to the next. Rather than calling or sending email messages to interested family members (grandparents, for instance), just publish your calendar to the web so they can check it on their own. When they find an activity that fits their schedule, they’ll attend—and the only thing you had to do was update your own calendar. You can even add password protection to a web calendar if you like.
To place your calendar on the web:
Click Share.
Click Publish.
Type in the name of the calendar that you want to post.
Enter the website location where you want the calendar posted.
Place a check mark next to Automatically publish changes made to this calendar.
Select Notes, Reminders, and/or Tasks as desired.
Image of publishing calendar online in Windows Calendar
When you publish a calendar to the web, it’s up to you how much of the calendar appears for others to see. This lets you maintain your privacy.
Click Publish.
Send appointments or invitations by email
It’s rare to meet someone now who doesn’t have an email address. That makes it a lot easier to invite people to events or to notify them of activities happening with your family. For example, if you want to invite grandma to your child’s regional soccer match, you can do it by email as you set up the activity on your calendar. You’ll notify grandma and set up everything from your calendar in one simple process.
To create an appointment and send an instant email notice:
Click New Appointment on the toolbar.
In the Details task pane, fill in the details for the appointment, such as a description, the location, the start and end date and time, and whether the event will recur. Be sure to select the proper family member’s calendar.
Click Attendees.
In the Windows Calendar dialog box, enter the name and email address for the person that you want to invite to the appointment.
Click To to add the person to the Attendees box.
Click OK.
In the Details task pane, click Invite.
Sending a calendar invitation in Windows Calendar
Invitations and appointments can be sent quickly using the Details task pane in Windows Calendar.
A new email message will appear on your screen, showing INVITE in the subject line and with the appointment attached. Verify the recipient list, and click Send.
As you can see, Windows Calendar is a big improvement over previous electronic calendars. Just the ability to see multiple calendars at a glance is a huge bonus for my family—we’ve stopped pestering each other for information and, more important, we’ve stopped missing appointments and bickering with each other over scheduling problems. It can work for your family, too. Give it a try!
