One assistant, five calendars, standalone Outlook 2000 or Entourage X

[Charles Lavin]

Hi --

I have a single executive assistant that needs to keep track of calendars
for five different people.

She has access to either a standalone Windows 2000 computer running Outlook
2000 (IMO), or a standalone Mac OS X computer running Entourage (Office X).

She needs to be able to make, cancel and/or modify all the appointments on
all the calendars.

She needs to be able to track free/busy information between these five
calendars.

The people that these calendars represent will not (cannot) have access to
these calendars. The assistant will print out the calendar and hand it to
the appropriate person.

There is no chance of putting in an Exchange server here.

How do I set this up? Is this best done on the Windows box or on the Mac?

Thanks for any and all help,
CL

 

[Guest]

Would it not be sufficient to simply create 5 calendar folders in her outlook
profile (as subcalendars of the personal calendar) with the names of the
users as (sub)folder names?

 

[Charles Lavin]

That's what I've attempted to do. But I can't figure out how to update the
Free/Busy information for all five people.

It's not possible to display and work on five calendars simultaneously on
screen, and it's not practicable for her to be flipping back and forth,
again and again, between calendars to see who's free and who isn't. I want
her to be able to take advantage of the "Attendee Availability" tab and see
everyone's free/busy status in one place.

Thanks,
CL

 

[Guest]

With Outlook 2003 she would be able to display the calendars in one view side
by side.

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

With Outlook 2003 she would be able to display the calendars in one
view side by side.

But will this actually work with free/busy for each? I've never tried this
without Exchange....

 

[Charles Lavin]

Hi --

1) We're not talking about Outlook 2003, but Entourage X.

2) Even if Entourage can display side-by-side calendaring like Outlook 2003,
it is not practical to display five calendars side-by-side on a computer
screen.

Tnx
CL

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

There are no "separate calendars" in Entourage, so you can forget about
that. If Outlook Windows will do that without Exchange - I think Outlook's
"Calendar Subfolders" will display effectively separate calendars.

On the other hand, you might actually go one better in Entourage. If you
give each user a category, then you can use the Category filter in the
calendar to display one at a time or all together. But printing "one at a
time" doesn't work - you always get all categories.

So you'd better go with Outlook and its separate subfolders, which can be
printed separately. Yu won't ever see more than one on screen at a time,
though.

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

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PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[Charles Lavin]

Thanks for the info.

So, if I understand this correctly, I cannot keep five calendars in
Entourage unless I keep them all in one big calendar and make each person a
separate category.

This still doesn't solve the Free/Busy issue, and actually makes the problem
worse than if the user stayed on Outlook 2000.

I need to know this, because it may not be practical for this user to move
to the Mac after all.

Thanks again,
CL