How to make multiple Outlook appointments private

Sometimes when you are sharing Outlook calendars you don’t want your colleagues to see full details on your existing calendar commitments even though you appreciate the benefits of a collaborative team working approach to your mutual priority management activities.

In short, we are going to do 4 things: Change our Calendar view, incorporate a ‘Sensitivity’ field (that’s Outlook speak for the ‘Private’ and normal calendar appointment value), change the Sensitivity of multiple calendar entries and recover our normal calendar view.

1 Change your Microsoft Outlook Calendar view

In Outlook 2007
In your Calendar: Select your ‘One Day’ view then >Click View > Current View > Select ‘By Category’.
Marvel at the options you have for viewing and managing your competing priorities in the Outlook Calendar.

In Outlook 2010
In your Calendar: Select your ‘One Day’ view then > ‘View’ Tab > Change View > Select ‘By Category’.
Marvel at the options you have for viewing and managing your competing priorities in the Outlook Calendar.

OK, you now have your Calendar in columns. And where you have columns in Outlook you can ‘Add’ ‘Delete’ ‘Rearrange’ ‘Sort’ and ‘Group’ by those columns! So …….

2 Incorporate a ‘Sensitivity’ field into your Microsoft Outlook Calendar

Right-Click on any column header – I suggest ‘Subject’ and select:

In Outlook 2007: ‘Customise Current View’. In Outlook 2010 ‘View settings’

In Outlook 2007 hit ‘Fields’. In Outlook 2010 hit ‘Columns’.

In the ‘Fields’ or ‘Columns’ dialogue box – select from ‘All Appointment Fields’.

Find ‘Sensitivity’ in the left box and add it to the right box just under ‘End’ in the list.

Click ‘OK’ twice to come out of the dialogue.

OK, now we are going to do that great ‘Group’ thing we can do with Outlook.

Right-click again on a column header and hit the ‘Group By’ box. See what happens? A ‘Group By’ area opens up at the top of your columns.

This allows you to dynamically group your total view by and Column header you want.

Now drag your ‘Sensitivity’ column into the area where it says ‘Drag a column header here to group by that column’. All you appointments are now grouped by sensitivity.

3 Change the Sensitivity of multiple Microsoft Outlook Calendar entries

Click on the ‘Sensitivity’ column to sort it with ‘Private’ entries at the top of the list.

Now click on ‘Start’ column until your future dates are at the top.

Scroll down to find the date range you want to change to ‘Private’.

Using ‘Shift’ or ‘Ctrl’ to highlight multiple entries.

Simply drag all those highlighted entries up into the ‘Private area of your list by holding down the left click and scrolling the selected items into the ‘Private’ group in your list.

4 Recover your Normal Microsoft Outlook Calendar View.

In Outlook 2007: Go to ‘View’ > Current View > Change back to ‘Day Week month’ and you are done

In Outlook 2010: Go to ‘Change View’ in your View tab and select ‘Calendar’

That’s it folks, I hope it helps.