The Windows 10 Calendar has steadily improved since it was first seen and is now a useful tool. Roland Waddilove list his top 10 tips
1 Enable The Live Tile
This is the simplest tip of all, but it is one of the most useful. The Windows 10 Start menu contains tiles for starting apps, but they can also show live content. Right click the Calendar tile on the Start menu and select More, Turn live tile on. Then right click it and select Resize, Large so there is room to display events from your Calendar. It shows today's appointments and it means you can see what it coming up without even opening the Calendar app.
2 Add A Holiday Calendar
It is useful (and easy) to add public holidays to the calendar: click More Calendars at the bottom of the left panel and then select the UK holiday calendar, or another country's calendar if you prefer. Depending on how big the window is, you might have to scroll down the left panel to see the holiday calendars section. There is a tick box to show/hide each you add. You could add several countries and then show the one you want when you need to check on holidays.
3 See A Weather Forecast
A great feature of Calendar is the mini weather forecast today and on each of the next five days. Select Week or Month views to see the forecast. There is a symbol showing sun, cloud, rain and so on, and the maximum and minimum temperatures. The weather symbol in the calendar is clickable and it opens a web browser to show a details weather forecast on msn.com.
4 Change The Colours
There are several customisation options for Calendar and you can completely change the way it looks. Right click a calendar in the left panel and a grid with nine coloured tiles is displayed. Click a colour and events for that calendar are displayed in that colour. This enables you to distinguish between events, such as those in your calendar, in a holiday calendar, Cortana reminders, and any other calendars you might have.
There are many more customisation options in the settings. Click the gear icon at the bottom of the left panel to open the settings panel and select Personalisation. At the top you can choose the calendar colour and in the middle is a choice of light or dark theme. At the bottom is Background and this enables you to choose from a selection of background images. There is also a browse button that enables you to choose your own background, such as a photo on the disk drive. The image only seems to display in the left panel and the calendar itself is a solid white or dark grey depending on the theme.
5 Add Extra Accounts
If you have a calendar elsewhere, such as another Outlook.com account or Google Calendar, the Windows Calendar app can read it and show the events. A different colour can be set for each one using the previous tip, so you can tell which calendar an event is on just by looking at it.
To add an account, click the gear icon and then select Manage Accounts. Click the plus button to add an account and there is a choice of Outlook, Exchange and Office 365, Google, iCIoud (used with Apple Macs), and Advanced set up. The first four are easy because Calendar knows the right settings to use and adding Google Calendar is really easy, but with the last you need to know your POP or IMAP login details, such as user name, password, incoming and outgoing servers, and so on.
6 Customise Calendar Settings
What day does the week start with? That's not as stupid as it sounds and if you use Calendar for work it is often useful to set the first day as Monday, which is better for organising work appointments and events.
Click the gear icon to open the settings panel and select Calendar settings. At the top you can set the day the week starts on. There are also options to set the work week, so if you work four days for example, you can set them here. This is useful because in the main Calendar view is a Work Week view that shows just the days you are working this week and the events and appointments that are scheduled.
A bit further down the settings is an option to set your work hours. This sets a slightly different background colour to the work and non-work hours.
7 Print Your Schedule
The day, week, work, and month views can all be printed, but the year view cannot. Select a view and then click the three dots in the top right corner of Calendar. Click Print and the print preview window appears. You can print to a physical printer or to a PDF file. A PDF probably isn't that useful, but printing your work day or week is useful if you are going to be out without your computer.
8 Invite People To Meetings
This is a brilliant feature of Calendar and you can see who is coming to meetings and events and who can't make it. Click in the calendar to create a new event and enter the event name, location and time. Then click the More Details button. A new event form appears and on the right is a box, into which you can enter email addresses. It is linked to the People app with your contacts, so you can just start typing a name and then click one of the suggestions.
When the event is saved, emails are sent to the people on the list and they see a description of the event and Yes, Maybe and No buttons. When those are clicked, the Calendar app records the fact and so you can see who has accepted or declined the invitation.
9 Organise Your Time
Some events last all day or even longer, such as a holiday or a trip. For those, tick the all day option. For others you can choose to set the time of the even to one of four states. Right click an event in the calendar and click Show As. There are options to set the time as Free, Tentative, Busy or Out of Office.
The option you choose affects how the event is displayed, and there are different patterns for each one. This decision will also affects warnings too. For example, if you set an event as busy and try to schedule another event at the same time, you'll be told that it clashes and you then choose another time. Some events, such as working on a project all day, could be set as free time, because you can always find half an hour during the day to have a meeting with someone.
10 Set Recurring Events
Setting up recurring events is a great time saver and if you have work meetings every Monday at 10am, you can create one event and set it to recur automatically every Monday. It is handy for personal events too, such as if you see a friend every Thursday evening and so on.
Click in the calendar and enter the event name. Clear the All day box and enter the time. Click the More details button and in the new event form, click the Repeat button in the top right corner. New options appear and events can be scheduled to occur every day, week, month and year. There is an option to set an end date or let it run forever.