With growing numbers of virtual conferences last year, there is little wonder that iCalendar links are more popular than ever. The idea behind  these special files/links is to create a seamless experience for your end users to add an event to their calendar by simply clicking on a link.

Perhaps you want to post a series of links on a conference webpage so attendees can easily sign up for sessions, or maybe you just enjoy the ease of emailing links to a large recipient list rather than sending individual invitations. Let’s explore how these work.

But first, thank you to my friend Carolyn for inspiring this Byte with this excellent question. 😊

About iCalendar Links

The word “iCalendar” might remind you of an application made by Apple, but this is actually something different. iCalendar is also a media file type that can transmit information about events; like date, time, and location. This file can be opened by others and be used to communicate scheduling information to a wide variety of calendar types; including Outlook, Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Yahoo Calendar, and many others.

The steps lined out below will cover how to accomplish this with Outlook Desktop Applications.

1. Create a Meeting

• Start by creating a New Meeting in your Outlook Calendar. Be sure you select New Meeting, not appointment.

• Select the time and date as you would like it to appear on someone else’s calendar. Because you have selected Meeting, rather than appointment, this event will automatically adjust to the end user’s time zone.  Add any comments that you would like them to see, including Zoom links.

• Even though you have no recipients, you can click Send on this invitation; this will save it to your calendar without attendees.

2. Save the event in an iCalendar Format

On Outlook for Windows/PC

• Double click on the newly created meeting in your calendar to open it back up. Go to the File tab

• On the left menu, select Save As.

• Save to your desktop (or somewhere easy to find). Be sure that Outlook is saving this as an “ics” or iCalendar Format.

• The file will appear on your Desktop, or whichever save location you  selected in the previous step.

On Outlook for Mac

This process is even simpler for Mac users.

• Find the event on your calendar, and click and drag it to your desktop.

• For Mac users, the click and drag feature will create an .iCalendar file automatically.

3. Upload the iCalendar Event

Now you just need a place to store this file. Your steps may vary from here, depending on the location where you are storing it. Treat this file like you would any other file you are uploading to share on a webpage, like a document or a download.

• In my case I uploaded it to my WSU Omni webpage.

…I did this just for the purposes of generating a link. From here, I could right click and copy the link for use in other locations, like web pages, or emails.

Note: You may also chose to store your iCal file in OneDrive, or SharePoint, or any other location where a public link can be generated to an uploaded file.

• Incidentally, if you are a WSU employee and are interested in learning more about how to create Omni pages or upload documents, Media Resources has some very helpful trainings and information.

The End User Experience

In my example, I inserted the link to my iCalendar file into a conference webpage. Maybe you would choose to do this for each of the conference sessions…

When your end user clicks on this link, they will be prompted to open the file with their default mail program (most support iCalendar events).

This will open as a meeting to be accepted. Although your name will be on this event as the creator, you will not receive notification when they accept this meeting.

The event will now appear on their calendar with all the details you created.

Thoughts?

What do you think about this trick? Do you think you will create iCalendar links for your events? I would love to hear from you. Feel free to drop me a line!

Congratulations, Power Users!

Congratulations to all our Power Users! For the full gallery, and more information about the WSU Microsoft Office Power User Program, please visit: wichita.edu/poweruser

• Kristen Watts

Sometimes archiving just doesn’t do the trick. Your mailbox is full, you archive, and still find yourself close to the precipice of another notification that you will need to free up space. So you go through old emails, deleting hundreds of junk mails, only to see the tiniest bit of space free up. What is going on? Well… the culprit is usually not the hundreds of text-only junk emails, but rather a handful of very large emails. Here is how you can isolate those large emails, and free up space FAST by contending with those large beasts in your mailbox.

Method 1: Sort

At the top right of your email list, notice that your default is to sort emails by Date. This is usually what you want, but for the moment, you want to find your largest emails.

Click on this dropdown, and select Size.

Notice how this organizes your mailbox. Your emails are separated into:

• Huge: 10-25 MB emails
• Very Large: 5-10 MB emails
• Large: 1-5 MB emails
• Medium: 25KB – 1 MB emails
• Small: 10-25KB emails.

This is often an “aha!” moment for people. You might discover, for instance, that a newsletter you receive weekly is the culprit for the size inflation in your inbox. Perhaps you forgot about how a month ago a large quantity of pictures were sent to you, and so on.

Combing through and deleting a handful of your Huge and Very Large emails can free up tons of space in no time.

Method 2: Incorporate a Search Folder

Search Folders are not a new topic in Office Bytes… See this article for more: Outlook Search Folders and Smart Folders. Long story short, you can create a variety of search folders to create a window into a search in your Outlook program, and Large Mail is an excellent option if you want to keep an eye on large emails long term.

1. On the left side of the screen, scroll down to Search Folder. It is usually toward the bottom of your screen.

2. Right click and select New Search Folder.

3. In the popup, scroll down to Large Mail. Customize this folder further by choosing a size at the bottom. Press OK.

4. Now you will have a handy folder on the left side of your Outlook  screen that you can access any time to keep track of large emails.

You can delete emails from either your sorted inbox view, or from the Search Folder you created.

Don’t Forget to Empty Deleted Items!

Don’t forget, those items you delete will sit in your deleted items folder and continue to take up space in your Office account until you empty the folder.

One way to do this is to right click on the Deleted Items folder, and select Empty Folder.

Remove Large Attachments

Perhaps you have found a large email; and while you still wish to hold on to the email itself, the attachment is no longer necessary, or has already been downloaded. Another option you might consider is removing the attachments from large emails.

1. Select the email message.

2. Click on the dropdown next to the attachment, or click on the attachment. Do not double click, as this will open the attachment, just a single click to select it.

3. In either the dropdown, or in the Attachments contextual tab that appears when you select the attachment, select Remove Attachment.

Thoughts?

What do you think? Will this clear up some space in your Inbox? I did this last week, and cleared out almost 2 GB in about fifteen minutes. I was shocked to discover that an image laden newsletter I had been receiving weekly was the primary culprit.

Congratulations, Power Users!

Congratulations to our newest Power Users! For the full gallery, and more information about the WSU Microsoft Office Power User Program, please visit: wichita.edu/poweruser

Most people are somewhat familiar with the concept of “drag and drop” when it comes to software… that is to say, when you click on an item, hold down your mouse, and drag it to another location. Sometimes it is as simple as moving a file from one folder to another; the action of clicking on the file and dragging it to the new folder. But there are other tools you can access with this action. Outlook takes this feature to another level, and contains a remarkable number of possible uses for drag and drop. Here are just a few…

Attachments

In Outlook Essentials, we talk about the Attach File button in the ribbon…

… but another popular way to attach files is by dragging the file from its location into the body of an email. Particularly handy if your document is located on the desktop.

This will also work to drag the attachment from the body of a received email into a new email.

Reorder Calendar View

Here is a secret, little-known drag and drop feature: reordering calendars. Many of us work with multiple calendars open at once, like my two coworkers’ calendars below.

Sometimes calendar order gets altered for some mysterious reason, or maybe you just want them to be in a different order than the default. Drag and drop to the rescue!

Click on the calendar name on the left pane and change the order with drag and drop.

In this case, I chose to flip the order, but I could easily flip it back with another drag and drop.

By the way, if you are working with calendar groups (come to Outlook Advanced to learn more), you can reorder an entire group with drag and drop. Pretty nifty!

Create Appointments from Other Modules

When I wrote about the Journal (secret feature!) I showed you this little trick, dragging and dropping a Journal entry into the calendar to make a note of the time you spent on the phone call or conversation.

The same goes for the other modules. What if you would like to set aside some time to look at the content of an email, or make a meeting in response to it?

Drag and drop the email from your inbox into the calendar module in the navigation.

This will create an event with the details of the message plugged in. Don’t forget to set the time and invite attendees, of course!

Create Emails from Other Modules

What about the inverse? Perhaps you have an event, the details of which you would like to share in an email without an actual invitation.

Try dragging and dropping a calendar event into your mail module in the navigation.

This will create an email, with all the contents of your calendar event, ready to share with interested parties.

Create Tasks from Other Modules

There are tons of ways to create tasks from an email, but one of them is drag and drop! Same story here, click on the email and drag it down to the tasks module to get started.

In this case, sometimes the flag button we talk about in Outlook Essentials is a little quicker, but this may come in handy too!

Congratulations, Power Users!

Congratulations to our newest Power Users! For the full gallery, and more information about the WSU Microsoft Office Power User Program, please visit: wichita.edu/poweruser

Kelley Smetak

Most of us employ archiving to some degree in our Outlook experience. Even with archiving, sometimes you may find that you don’t feel the need to keep old calendar events from many years ago… and believe it or not, they are taking up space in your Exchange account. If you are in this boat, you may decide to delete old calendar events in batch. Here is a handy way to accomplish this in Outlook.

By the way, shout out to Aaron for having this quandary and inspiring this Byte!

Using Advanced Search

There are probably several ways to accomplish this task, and some of it depends on your version of Outlook. We are going to use Advanced Search for this Byte. And you can follow along up until the last three steps if you are uncertain if you want to delete but just want to explore the feature.

1. Navigate to the calendar in the navigation (lower left).  In the upper right click into the search field.

2. This activates your search tab. In this tab, select Search Tools and Advanced Find.

3. Go to the Advanced Tab in the popup.

4. In the Field dropdown, select Date/Time fields and End.

5. For Condition, select On or Before.

6. For Value, list the date that you want to cut off.

7. Select Add to List and Find Now.

8. Click into the body of results. Press Ctrl + A to select all

9. Right click, and Delete.

10. Don’t forget to empty your deleted items folder to free up space!

The same process could theoretically apply to mail, though I have found that people tend to archive mail and/or want to be more cautious about deleting them in batch (understandably)… whereas fewer people care about what meetings and lunches they attended in 2014.

Bonus Tip: Emojis

How about a bonus Outlook tip at no extra charge? I have to thank Emily for this one, because I had no idea about this shortcut.

If you want to insert an emoji into an email, you can access a full list with the command:  Windows Key + ;

If you don’t see this appear, be sure you have clicked into the body of the email message.

By the way, you can access these emojis in other screens as well… try it out in your browsers!

Thoughts?

What do you think? Do you need to clear out any old events in your calendar to free up some space? Let me know how it goes!

Congratulations, Power Users!

Congratulations to our newest Power Users! For the full gallery, and more information about the WSU Microsoft Office Power User Program, please visit: wichita.edu/poweruser

The Automatic Schedule View feature in Outlook is generally regarded as a gnawing frustration for most Outlook users. It is not a debilitating occurence, but something that requires constant correction. Here is the good news… you can turn it off so it never bothers you again.

Before we jump in, big thank you to Megan for having this question in the last Outlook Advanced session.

How is Schedule View Triggered?

Most people, when viewing multiple calendars at a time, are used to viewing them side by side like this:

But, by default, if you open more than 5 calendars at a time, instead your view automatically changes to something like this:

This horizontal orientation is Schedule View. Not the end of the world… most people just mosey up to the Arrange group in the ribbon, and flip back to Work Week or Week view (depending on their preference).

That being said, some find it a bit jarring when you are browsing through 4 calendars, then open up one more and suddenly the whole view is changed. Sort of interrupts your train of thought…

Who knows, maybe you even like Schedule View (no judgement), but would like to activate it yourself, rather than have it flip on automatically. Here is how you can make that change.

Disabling Automatic Schedule View

1. Go to the Calendar module.
2. In the Home tab, Arrange group, click on the arrow in the lower right of the group.
3. Scroll down to Display Options, and either uncheck “Automatically switch…to Schedule View”, or change the minimum number to automatically switch from 5 to a number you prefer.

4. Click OK.

Some of this is personal preference. I turned this feature off completely. For me, I would rather change my view by hand rather than have it automatically change when I am in the middle of browsing calendars.

You may decide that you want it to automatically change for you, but just after a larger number of calendars are opened. Either way, the power is now in your hands!

Thoughts?

What do you think, do you think you will make an adjustment to your Schedule View defaults?

Microsoft PowerUp!

Hey are you all signed up and ready for one of my upcoming PowerUp sessions? I hope to see you there! More information can be found at wichita.edu/powerup.

Congratulations, Power Users!

Congratulations to our newest Power Users! For the full gallery, and more information about the WSU Microsoft Office Power User Program, please visit: wichita.edu/poweruser

Arlene Thomsen

Are you lost in a sea of emails? It might be useful to make certain emails stand out with a special color or formatting. Perhaps a fillable form that comes to your inbox with a specific subject could be green, or all emails from your boss could show up as red. Customizing your inbox with conditional formatting can be a huge time saving tool to help draw attention to certain emails in your inbox at glance. Let’s take a look. Before we get started, I would like to thank Michelle for having an excellent question in last week’s Outlook Advanced class that inspired this Byte.

About Conditional Formatting

Just like we experienced in Excel, conditional formatting in Outlook will look for certain conditions and apply a specific appearance to them. Here are a few caveats before we jump in:

• This feature is currently only available for the PC desktop application of Outlook (apologies to Mac users).
• Conditional Formatting applies to one folder at a time. This means that you can create separate rules for each folder. It also means that you should be cautious of which folder is selected before jumping into the view setting.
• Changes you make with this setting are at your computer application level only: it is a view setting within the Outlook desktop application. This means that other instances of Outlook (e.g. the online application, or the desktop application running on an additional computer) on will not adopt these view settings.
• If you would like to learn more about Conditional Formatting, please attend one of my Outlook Advanced sessions (listed in myTraining).

Create a Conditional Formatting Rule

1. Start by selecting the folder where you would like to apply the rule. This may just be your Inbox if you are not a big fan of folders.

2. Go to the View tab, Current View group, and select View Settings.

3. Select Conditional Formatting.

Here are all your current Conditional Formatting rules. That’s right, you already have some rules… like the way an unread message uses blue font, for instance… I would not recommend changing existing default rules.

3. On the right select Add.

4. At the bottom of the popup, you will be prompted to name your rule. Use a name that is relevant to you.

From here, there are two settings we have to create: Font and Condition. Just like with Excel, it is easy to get carried away with creating one setting and forget to do the other…

Font Settings

Let’s set the appearance first.

1. To the left of your title, select Font.

2. A popup screen appears with various font options along the top: font type, style and size…

… and of course the funnest part, in the lower left, Color!

3. Make your font and color selections, then press OK once.

Condition Settings

This second part is easy to forget. Sometimes we spend a lot of time crafting the perfect appearance, and then forget to tell Outlook what the Condition is where the appearance should be applied.

1. Below where you selected Font, select Condition.

Take a look at your options… you have the ability to format based on:

• Specific words in a subject field
• Emails from or to specific people
• Situations where you are the only person in the To: line
• … and we will see some more examples shortly.

2. For this scenario, I am going to set a condition based on emails From a specific person. Click on the From button to browse the directory. Double click on the person’s name, then press OK.

• This option works best if you browse for a name, rather than typing in the full email.

3. Let’s take a look at the More Choices tab, because things get even more interesting here. Not only are more options present here, but we could layer these on top of the previous selection… here are conditions based on:

• Category
• Only unread or read items
• Items with attachments
• Importance level
• Items that are flagged

So think about this, you could set your formatting to color code emails from a specific person that are unread; or emails that have specific words in the title that also have attachments. So many possibilities!

4. Once you have this set how you would like, press OK. Then OK again to get back to your Outlook folder.

If all went well, you should be able to see the effects of your lovely new rule. I picked purple for mine…

Thoughts?

What do you think about Conditional Formatting in Outlook? Do you think you will apply some of these rules to your Outlook folders? I would love to hear from you!

Congratulations, Power Users!

Congratulations to our newest Power Users! For the full gallery, and more information about the WSU Microsoft Office Power User Program, please visit: wichita.edu/poweruser

Samantha Dolan