transparency in multiple Outlook calendars

[Magritte]

Is there any way to change the transparency (or remove the transparency) from
overlayed multiple calendars in Outlook 2007? I find it hard to read and
distinguish colors on the calendar that isn't on top and would prefer to see
a flat view of all my calendars.

Thanks.

 

[Bob I]

Try Increase your monitor Contrast, and decrease the brightness.

 

[Magritte]

I can only hope that was a joke...

Try Increase your monitor Contrast, and decrease the brightness.

 

[Bob I]

No, monitor settings make a major difference in what the screen looks like.

 

[Magritte]

Yes, and putting my car in neutral and pushing it to work will vastly improve
my fuel efficiency. But I don't want to do that either...

In case you're actually not joking: my monitor is calibrated and I don't
plan to uncalibrate it just to make Outlook look better. I'm looking for a
software solution...

Thanks.

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

Not that I know of - but you can uncheck them so only one at a time is in
view.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]



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[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

Um. That will screw up how all the other programs look and is a bad idea for
anyone who edits photos.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]



Outlook Tips by email:
mailto:[email protected]

EMO - a weekly newsletter about Outlook and Exchange:
mailto:[email protected]

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[Magritte]

That's what I figured but I thought I'd ask... I'd like to sync with Windows
Live Calendar but it has no support for Categories, only multiple calendars
and I don't like the way Outlook overlays multiple Calendars so this doesn't
look like it's going to be a workable solution.

Thanks.

Not that I know of - but you can uncheck them so only one at a time is in
view.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]



Outlook Tips by email:
mailto:[email protected]

EMO - a weekly newsletter about Outlook and Exchange:
mailto:[email protected]

You can access this newsgroup by visiting
http://www.microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/default.mspx or point your
newsreader to msnews.microsoft.com.

Is there any way to change the transparency (or remove the transparency)
from
overlayed multiple calendars in Outlook 2007? I find it hard to read and
distinguish colors on the calendar that isn't on top and would prefer to
see
a flat view of all my calendars.

Thanks.

 

[Tadwick]

You might want to take a look at http://calendar.schemax.com

 

[Magritte]

Thanks, but I think that's overkill for me. Ultimately I just want to be able
to categorize and color code different appointments based on the type of
appointment. I actually think Outlook's approach supporting both multiple
calendars and categories within calendars is the most powerful since
categories/tags allow for multiple categorization of a given appointment,
while different calendars provide another logical separation. Most online
calendars don't support categories/tags, only multiple calendars so syncing
with Outlook is less than ideal. I've been using a utility called SyncMyCal
which allows syncing of my Outlook calendar with Google Calendars and does
allow mapping of Outlook categories with different Google calendars. However
the syncing doesn't always work perfectly and there's not much in the way of
conflict resolution.

I've discovered the university where I work is moving toward an exchange
solution for e-mail and scheduling so I think that will be the best solution
for me for the meantime and maybe I'll move to a hosted exchange server if I
leave the university. The only thing I don't like about exchange (at least
the way it's implemented at work) is that there isn't full support for non-IE
browsers, which is pretty weak. There's only a light web-version for non-IE
browsers and for some inexplicable reason the calendar categories option is
missing when scheduling an appointment using the light web-interface. I find
the e-mail is also somewhat weak. I've never been happy with Microsoft's
approach to spam filtering which just doesn't work as well as Yahoo's or
Google's or a personal bayesian filter like popfile. There's also no
web-interface to allow for incorporation of other non-exchange mailboxes. So
most likely I'll continue forwarding my mail to a Gmail account but use
exchange for everything else.

 

[Tadwick]

:

"I just want to be able to categorize and color code different appointments
based on the type of appointment. I actually think Outlook's approach
supporting both multiple calendars and categories within calendars is the
most powerful since
categories/tags allow for multiple categorization of a given appointment,
while different calendars provide another logical separation."

Agreed, but how do you color an appointment tagged with multiple categories?

 

[Magritte]

Well, the way Outlook/exchange seems to do it is to just use the color of the
last category you added to the appointment in the calendar view. When you
open the details of the appointment, however, all the categories, with their
associated colors, are shown at the top of the event.

Interestingly, when you use multiple categories on an e-mail message, a
little color icon appears next to the message for each category you add, so
if you have only 1 category, there will only be one color next to it, but if
you add 3, there will be 3 smaller categories next to it. I'd argue that the
same type of thing should be used for appointments, so that the appointment
is split into multiple colors when it is assigned multiple categories. As it
is, however, isn't a horrible solution as you can still use multiple
categories but specify by adding last the most relevant category to show up
in the calendar views. Personally, I avoid using multiple categories anyway
as I sync to a Palm device which only supports 1 category/appointment. This
is why a multiple calendar approach would also work for me if I was happier
with the way Outlook displays them. However, I can see where multiple
categories could be a useful way to organize things, especially since you can
use search or different views to highlight particular categories. In this
case an event will show up in different views/searches without having to
actually make duplicates of the event.

 

[Tadwick]

Well, good luck to you - you seem to have a pretty good handle on what you
need.