showing event status colour (2003)

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In Outlook 2000, calendar events showed their status through colour – blue for busy etc.

How do I get this functionality in Outlook 2003?

David

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Are you on an Exchange server? If so then each account holder sets up, under Outlook, Options, Calendar, Free/Busy Options. In this screen input the number of months that you want to publish (I use 2). Then you will see on meeting requests the times that they have booked or are free.
If you create a meeting request and add a name that is not in the exchange server, then a box pops up asking if you want to join the web free/busy service. I presume that if you say yes then you can view as you did in the older versions. HTH

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Hi Paul

No I’m not on Exchange, though my last employer used it. Might that be the difference? I now find it almost impossible to use Outlook to manage appointments when it doesn’t give me any clues as to whether an appointment is in my office, outside or even tentative. The appointment edit screen asks how I want to show it but then doesn’t.

David

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David, PaulC assumed you meant how other users calendars show up when trying to schedule a meeting on Exchange Server. If that’s not the problem, I’m not sure what is – in 2003 the color coding of the borders of Appointments is unchanged from all prior Outlook versions:

Free – clear (or in effect white)
Tentative – blue and white diagonal stripes
Busy – solid blue
Out-of Office – marone (or whatever MS calls it)

Is it possible that you had some custom Appointment Item coloring Rules that you forgot were custom? Starting from a Calendar View, set up under:

Views | Arrange By | Current View | Customize Current | Automatic Formatting …

If this doesn’t help, can you explain a bit more about what you used to see vs. what you are seeing now?

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Hello John

In the dialog box Automatic Formatting shows “user defined colours for appointments” and clicking on the button brings up a blank dialog box, i.e. no rules set up. The view screen itself just shows the appointments with no borders or colours. All day events have a border but are resolutely white irrespective of the setting. I’ve clicked the rest button and I’ve also tried detect and repair.

This behaviour is the same for both monthly and weekly – the only views I normally use – but I’ve since had a look at work week view and this is as I would expect with boxes and colours. I’m sure month view at my last work showed colours – but then we used Exchange.

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Ah! If you are in 7-Day Week or Month View, the per-appointment color coding doesn’t show in Outlook 2003. Perhaps another Lounger can check XP and 2000 – I don’t have access to anything but 2003 right now.

Could you post an image of your calendar View with personal information blacked out? (Edit it with MS Paint or another graphics program, if it’s larger shrink it to 640 x 480 pixels in size.)

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In Outlook 2002, the status color doesn’t show in 7-day week or month view either, only in 1-day or 5-day working week view. It was the same in earlier versions, if I remember correctly.

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Not being on Exchange would be the main reason. Does the following help your problem, being on Exchange I cannot test this.
Manually from Calendar view

On the Tools menu, point to Send/Receive, and then click Free/Busy Information.

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