In many ways, this calendar is not so different from those “Hunks of the Midwestern Police Stations” paper calendars people leave hanging on the walls for months past their natural life spans. But this calendar offers several advantages over paper calendars. For example: •• It can automate the process of entering repeating events, such as weekly staff meetings or gym workout dates. •• The calendar can give you a gentle nudge (with a dialog box and a sound, if you like) when an important appointment is approaching. •• Your Mail calendar is synced with your Windows Live online calendar. Make a change on the Web calendar, you’ll find it changed on your PC, and vice versa. Tip: Truth be told, the online calendar has even more features than this one. For example, the Windows Live one has a to-do list, which the Mail calendar lacks.
•• You can “subscribe” to calendars on the Internet, like the ones published by your family members/classmates/baseball team members/downtrodden employees. For example, you can subscribe to your spouse’s Google calendar, thereby finding out if you’ve been committed to after-dinner drinks on the night the big game’s on TV.
Working with Views When you open Calendar, you see something like Figure 12-15. By clicking the buttons on the toolbar (or pressing Ctrl+Alt+1, 2, or 3), you can switch among any of these views: •• Day shows the appointments for a single day in the main calendar area, broken down by time slot. Tip: Calendar provides a quick way to get to the current day’s date: click “Go to today,” a link just below the mini-month calendar at left.
•• Week fills the main display area with seven columns, reflecting the current week. •• Month shows the entire current month. Double-click a date square or date number to create a new appointment. Tip: Your mouse’s scroll wheel can be a great advantage in this calendar. For example, when entering a date, turning the wheel lets you jump forward or backward in time. It also lets you change the time zone as you’re setting it.
Making an Appointment The basic calendar is easy to figure out. After all, with the exception of one unfortunate Gregorian incident, we’ve been using calendars successfully for centuries. Even so, there are two ways to record a new appointment: a simple way and a more flexible, elaborate way.