Introduction
Keeping your Outlook calendar updated is a helpful way to communicate your availability to others. Outlook offers ways to indicate your "type" of availability (e.g. busy, free, working elsewhere, etc.) without having to grant others greater access to the details of your calendar.
Instructions
1. Open or right-click on the calendar appointment.
2. Select "Show As" and select the appropriate status.
- Free = Often indicates that an individual is available, even if there is an appointment booked at this time. For example, it could be used to indicate a time that you are working on a specific assignment, yet could be available if a need arises.
- Working Elsewhere = Often indicates that a person is working off-site during that time. For example, this could indicate that a person is at a training, work event or is working remotely at that time.
- Tentative = Often indicates that a person has received an appointment that they either haven't accepted yet or that they are tentatively planning on attending.
- Busy = Often indicates that a person has an existing scheduling conflict and is unavailable. For example, another meeting is scheduled for that time or they have a time-sensitive assignment they have scheduled work time for.
- Out of Office = Often indicates that a person is away from work and unavailable during that time. For example, this could indicate that a person is on vacation or on personal leave.
