You have got a busy schedule, you are juggling competing priorities, commitments and meetings. You need to offer a number of meeting options to a client, supplier or friend who does not have access to your shared Outlook calendar on your network. Here’s a simple Outlook tip to do this:

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Using this approach has a number of business benefits:

1 you are able to focus your recipient’s attention into the date range you select

2 It helps your recipient make an easier scheduling decision

3 It avoids excessive rescheduling email and ‘Meeting Request’ messages.

4 Your calendar information is available to non-Outlook users as well as Outlook users.

5 You can decide how much scheduling information you want your recipient to see.

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The process is simplicity itself:

1 Open up a new email

2 Click into the body of the email

3 If you can see the ‘Include’ Group in your email top toolbar just hit the calendar icon. Alternatively, click on the ‘Insert’ tab in the top toolbar and hit the Calendar icon.

Outlook 2007 insert calendar into email option

4 In the pop up dialogue box Select which calendar you want to send and the date range you want your recipient to focus on.

5 Decide how much detail you want your recipient to see. The default is just the free/busy detail but you can click on the Detail slidebar o the right of the box to reveal 3 levels of detail to transmit

6 complete the rest of your email as normal and hit Send.

How could you use this? Let me know. I use it to provide telephone call booking flexibility for important calls as well as for face-to-face meetings.