If you use Google Calendar sync and have upgraded to Microsoft Office 2010 you’ve no doubt discovered that the two don’t work together. Here’s the world’s easiest fix:

1. Download this file: GoogleCalendarSync.zip
2. Unzip it
3. Go to C:\Program Files\Google\Google Calendar Sync
4. Rename GoogleCalendarSync.exe to OLDGoogleCalendarSync.exe
5. Move the new GoogleCalendarSync file to this folder.
6. Launch  Goggle Calendar Sync.exe
7. Fixed.

In the simplest of terms, the latest version of the Sync.exe file reads the version of Microsoft Outlook differently from the way the older version of the same file does. We are simply replacing the latest version of the file with a slightly older one.

Cheers!

UPDATE 17Aug: Google has released an update that should work with the 32 bit version of Outlook 2010

For many people the default setting in the Outlook calendar of 30 minutes time increments is not granular enough. For some, a 15 minute schedule is more useful. But the problem people run into with Outlook 2007 is trying to print showing 15 minute increments!

Need to print your schedule in 15 minute blocks? I’ll show you how in less than 2:

First off, lets make sure your Outlook calendar is showing the 15 minute day.

Open your calendar, select DAY or WEEK

Right click on the time bar to the left like this:

Select 15 Minute from the menu. Now you can see your daily schedule in the time increment of your choice. OK, lets get to the printing part.

In your Outlook Calendar select FILE –> PRINT and for the sake of this tutorial we’ll select a Daily Style – BUT WAIT! We need to DEFINE STYLES.. So click on DEFINE STYLES..

Then, let’s select Daily Style and choose EDIT like so:

And here comes the magic - reduce the time in the Print From – Print To range to 8 hours. For example, 9am to 5pm:

That’s it! That’s what you have been pulling out your hair over!

You can play around with other settings (I like really small fonts in my calendars) to customize the look and feel of your printouts. But just to show it really works, I present to you, an Outlook 15 minute day print preview:

Seems I’m free on the 17th . . .

Every once-in-a-while a tip come along that makes you say “Huh! I didn’t know you could do that!” This is one of those tips.

Did you know you can display non-consecutive days in your Microsoft Outlook calendar view? You can. Here’s how easy it is:

1. Open Outlook.
2. Switch to Calendar view
3. Click any day in the small calendar view on the left in the Navigation pane.
   (No Navigation Pane? View–>Navigation Pane –> Normal)
4. You will now see just the day you selected in the main calendar window

Now hang on Cowboys and Girls – Hold down the ALT key and click 2 or 3 or more days like this:

Holy Smokes! Look at the main window now – It’s the 3rd, 17th and 22nd – all in one window:

This will also work if you are viewing multiple calendars! Extremely handy when you want to see what everyone is doing next Thursday, Saturday and Tuesday . . . Or what you are doing for the next 3 Mondays and Fridays . . .Etc!

Play with it – you can select an entire week with random days attached . . . What do you think?!

I am using Outlook 2007 w/ Windows Vista.  In previous versions, I was able to wrap the text of calendar appointments when printing my calendar so that all meeting details would actually print.  How do I do this in outlook 2007?

Or not . . .

In Outlook 2007 the printing feature has a lot of little quirks that are being discovered – the calendar printing assistant I discussed in another article fixes some of them, but not this problem.

The Calendar Printing Assistant for Office Outlook 2007 is an application for people who need an easy way to print and customize their Outlook 2007 calendar information. It puts you in control of the tools you need and helps you plan and create designer-quality output.

Slipstick has a list of Outlook tools that may fix the problem. See if one of those addressess your need and if anyone else has a suggestion or an answer, please add a comment!

So you want to create a drop down calendar in Excel? Apart from sending alerts to Outlook from Excel (working on that article as well) this has been the most requested how-to as of late. For example:

Reader Tim Asks:

How do I insert a calendar as a way for a user to click on the cell have the date box open and choose the date that should be in the cell? Also where do I send the beer?

Reader Wayne Asked:

I am sure that I saw a pull down menu in a worksheet cell.  I want to have a cell formated so that I can have a pull down menu of a calendar in which to choose the date.

This seems like it would be so easy yet when you look around on-line the answers are all full of VBA scripts and custom code.

I assume you just want someone using the spreadsheet to be able to select a cell, have a calendar drop down and then populate the field with whatever date the person chooses. Yes it can be done. Yes it is fairly involved. And yes, I have a workaround.

Would you like the easiest, cheesiest, sleaziest way to do this? Well then watch this:

The first thing you need to do is enable the Developer Tab in Excel.

1. Select the Pearl or “Office Button” in Excel. The Pearl is the ball in the top left corner that gives you the option to Print, Save, etc.
2. With the Pearl menu open select Excel Options from the very bottom on the right.
3. Another menu will open – Select Popular
4. Check the box for “Show Developer Tab in the Ribbon“

Now you have the developer tab with all the controls for forms, xml, code, etc.

Go to the developer tab and select Insert, followed by the little Pink Floyd-esque More Controls icon.

Scroll through the list of controls and look what’s available. There are all sorts of funky add-ins you can use in your spreadsheets! We are looking for the Microsoft Date and Time Picker Control

Highlight it and select OK.

Your mouse will turn in to a cross hair – click and hold, draw a rectangle, release. You now have a date box!

You will also see code in the top akin to “=EMBED(“MSComCtl2.DTPicker.2″,”")”

You will also notice that you are in Design Mode because that icon is highlighted. This allows you to play with the settings for the date box you just created.

Deselect Design Mode and you have a date control! Select the drop down and a calendar appears! Holy Cow that’s super cool awesome but guess what! It doesn’t do anything!

You can click it and change the date as much as you want but nothing else is changing in your spreadsheet!

Here is where the genius of my non-code writing laziness pays off. Ready?

What cell do you want the date to change in? Let’s say C5

1. Ok, In B5 type SELECT DATE:
2. In D5 enter the formula =C5
3. Still got that calendar control visible like in the image above?
4. Let’s go back to Design Mode by clicking it. Move the calendar control box up around the C3 area just to move it out of the way.
5. Right Click in the calendar control and select Properties.
6. A properties menu will open up
7. Look for the field Linked Cell and enter C5 (that’s where we want the date change to happen)
   
8. You might get an error message – ignore it!
9. Close the Properties menu
10. Deselect Design Mode

Here’s where it all comes together. .

1. Select the Date Drop down and change the date
2. You will see Cell C5 change to that date
3. You will see cell D5 (which =C5) change as well. The D5 was just to ensure that C5 was actually showing a date.
4. Repeat step 1-3 until you are as giddy as a little girl.

Last Question: How do I use this?

Well you can create as many of these drop downs as you like. You can tell each one what cell to update (Linked Cell) and you can move the Date Control right over the top of the field it is updating!  Think about that – Move the date picker right over the top of the cell it is linked to. Only you know the truth! There is no advanced code, you’re just hiding the data in C5 under the Date control that is updating or controlling C5! Then do any date calculations you need to do using C5 as the reference!

I told you it was sleazy, cheesy and easy!

I’ll make it even easier – here’s the spreadsheet I used to write this tutorial and take screen shots

Excel Drop Down Date Example (12k)

And Tim, You any any other reader can always send the beer to me by clicking beer mug at the top of the page.

A recent posting entitled “Viewing and Working With Multiple Calendars” has brought up the following question:

When I am using Microsoft Outlook can I print what I see in overlay mode?

The answer? YES! It’s a little tricky at first but I have full faith and confidence in your ability. Ready?

Microsoft has a free program called the Calendar Printing Assistant. With it you can print out your calendars and tasks in all the layouts and designs you have been wishing you could for years. You just didn’t know it existed before!

The Calendar Printing Assistant for Office Outlook 2007 is an application for people who need an easy way to print and customize their Outlook 2007 calendar information. It puts you in control of the tools you need and helps you plan and create designer-quality output.

1. Download it from Here and try to install it (Close Outlook first)

You may get a message that you need version 3 of the Microsoft .NET framework. It was initially released 11/21/2006 so you may or may not have it installed already.

2. If you need the .Net 3.0 program download it here, install it and then install the Calendar Printing Assistant again.

Ok, so you have your .NET 3.0 software up-to-date and you have installed Microsoft’s Calendar Printing Assistant.

You are not going to use Outlook to print the calendars that are in overaly mode, you are going ot use the Calendar Printing Assistant program.

Look in Start -> Programs -> Microsoft Office -> Microsoft Office Tools -> Calendar Printing Assistant

Fire up the program! (You can also pin it to your start menu or drag it to your desktop so you can have faster access to it.)

You will see something like this:

Keep in mind that you cannot edit appointments here, you are just playing with printing options.

You should see your Outlook Calendar, and on the right hand side a list of template styles to choose from.

Select the dropdown and change it from View Templates to Calendars and Tasks. Now you will see all of your calendars from Outlook and all of the sharted calendars ytou have access to!

Clicking on a persons name will activate their calendar and add it to yours in overlay mode. To remove someone simply right click on their name or click the drop-down and choose Remove From Calendar.

Take a look at the left side of the program. You can easily modify the colors and symbols associated with the calendars you have selected by mousing over a name and clicking the drop-down button that appears.

And that’s where I am going to leave you! As always, poke around the program. There aren’t a lot of settings but it is very flexible. You should be able to master it fairly quickly. Stuck? Leave a comment and someone will be sure to get back to you!

I received the following question today:

I have created multiple, different calendars in Outlook 2007. Rather than viewing the calendars in the side-by-side mode, I want to merge two or more into a single Outlook calendar.  How do I do this?

Additionally How do I merge calendars into one, AND also maintain a copy of the individual calendars.

MS Office / Outlook Help does not seem to provide guidance on how to accomplish either of these tasks.

Nice challenge! I read this and did my best impression of a dog hearing a whistle and cocking its head to the side inquisitively – then it dawned on me. . .

This is a lot easier than you might expect! We aren’t actually going to merge the calendars in Outlook, but I think this will accomplish the effect you are looking for.

In Outlook go the the Calendar view. In the Navigation Pane on the left, check the boxes for all the calendars you want to see “merged”:

By default, the calendars are going to be in Side-By-Side view like this:

In this example you only see two calendars, but you could have 3, 4, 5 or more – (actually, up to 30!)

To view these as “one” there are two ways you can go.

First, the really easy way: VIEW -> VIEW IN OVERLAY MODE. Which will lay the calendars on top of each other:

Selecting the tab at the top will bring that calendar into focus but you will still see the appointments for the other calendars!

If you look closely at the tabs you will see an arrow:

This brings us to the other other really, really easy way to overlay calendars – just click the arrow to “stack” or “unstack” calendars.

If you have 3 calendars open in side-by-side mode, clicking the arrow on one of them will overlay it with your main calendar and leave the other unselected one still in side-by-side mode.

Click some arrows -kick the tires, see what she will do!

As always – comments welcomed!

I received a request for the following how-to: “I want to embed an outlook calendar entry in a document to allow people to click on the object to add an event to their outlook calendar. How do you do that?”

So you want to create a Word / Excel / PowerPoint document and embed a calendar event in it? No Problem!

1. Create a new calender entry / event in Outlook

2. Click on the entry so it is highlighted or selected and then click FILE -> SAVE AS

3. Save it as an “iCalendar Format” or “vCalendar Format” type document. I saved mine to my desktop.

4. Open Word (or Excel, Or PowerPoint, etc) and there are several ways to embed the file:

a. Drag the file from your desktop into the document. This gives you the least amount of control over the format.

b. Choose INSERT -> OBJECT -> CREATE FROM FILE. Browse to the file and select it, and choose the “Display as Icon” option. If you have an icon you prefer select it. (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12 has the office icons)

You now have an icon embedded in your document. You can right click on it to rename it (Select Package Object). When another user double clicks it their calendar event will open. All they have to do is select SAVE AND CLOSE!

Keep in mind, you can also email the file you saved to your desktop as well!

The Situation? Outlook does not display holidays in the calendar.

Want the holidays listed?

1. Open Outlook.
2. From the tools menu, click Options.
3. Click Calendar Options.
4. Click Add Holidays.
5. Place a check beside the appropriate country/countries.
6. Click OK.
7. Click OK to close the Calendar Options dialog box.
8. Click OK to close the Options dialog box.

I have a personal laptop at home that has my personal calendar stuff in it. At my office I have a different laptop that uses Microsoft exchange and has my work calendar information.

I want the two to merge – to be the same – to show evening appointments in my work calendar and daytime meetings in my home calendar. (The exchange server detail isn’t important, it just happens to be what my company uses. This will work on any plain old Outlook calendars)

By synchronizing the two,  when I dock my iPhone at home I get both my personal and business appointments on it. If I change jobs I can just decouple the business laptop calendar and life moves on.

Easy Cheesy McPheesy:

• Download Google Calendar Sync on both computers
• Make sure you have a free account from Google Calendars
• Install the software and select 2-way
• Select sync every 20 minutes.

Now, when you add an appointment at home, it syncs to Google Calendar, in a few minutes your work laptop syncs as well and ads the appointment to your work computer. Delete an business appointment, it syncs to Google, then Syncs with home and the appointment is removed from all three!

Another added benefit is the ability to see your complete calendar online.

One note: Mark any personal appointments you don’t want the world to see as Private and when your boss looks at your calendar in Exchange he won’t see that you are taking banjo lessons every Tuesday at 11 or going to Office Supply Kleptomaniac’s Anonymous twice a week.