Calendar: Outlook 2003 Labels VS Outlook 2007 Categories

[dima]

Hello,

Given a shared calendar in our Exchange 2003 public folders:

With Outlook 2003 (and sufficient permissions), I am able to go into the
shared calendar and select the "Edit Labels" option to modify label names of
the 10 existing colors for that particular calendar. This change propagates
to all users viewing the calendar using Outlook 2003, and everyone sees the
new label names.

1) What is the Outlook 2007 equivalent of the above functionality? In other
words, what do I have to do to get the same results using only Outlook 2007
clients? Furthermore, are there any limitations in Outlook 2007 (number of
colors, number of categories, etc.)?

2) Is it possible to preserve this functionality using a mix of Outlook 2003
and 2007 clients? Is seamless integration of the two versions possible with
respect to this functionality?

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

1) There is no exact equivalent. The closest is Categories, but in Outlook 2007, they are user-specific, not folder-specific. Each user can have a virtually unlimited number of categories in their master list and apply up to 25 different colors to them. Categories that you apply to an individual item will be visible to all users, but each user's own color choice will apply.

2) Not really, because Outlook 2007 categories are user-specific, not folder-specific.

You might want to consider using a custom form to provide a fixed category selection for items in a public folder. That will work for both versions. See http://www.outlookcode.com/d/reqcat.htm .

If you have a retail version of Office/Outlook 2007 or a support contract, I suggest that you file a support incident on this issue. I don't think Microsoft sufficiently considered the impact on public folder applications, and filing an incident is the best way to let Microsoft know that there's a problem . Unlimited support for retail Office/Outlook 2007 is free for the first 90 days after activation. See http://support.microsoft.com/gp/vista_supoffnew for more information on this support policy.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[webmail]

Sue, thanks for your post. We have this exact same problem too.

I'm wondering, though, will the fixed category selection allow us to
show the associated category ("color") of the item or would we need to
open the item to discover it's category?

Thanks
Michael

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Whatever categories are assigned will display using the colors that the user has assigned to them. That's key: There is no way (yet) to centrally manage users' color choices, only the text aspect of their categories.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[webmail]

Thank you.

 

[Debbie]

Dima,

Can you tell me what permission level is assigned in order to edit the
labels in a shared calendar for Outlook 2003?

Thank you. Debbie

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

You'd need owner permission.

 

[Anna]

Hi
it's now almost 3 years since you wrote this - has there been any updates in
outlook? In our business we want to be able to share both categories and
color labels... We have managed to share categories by using CodeTwo Catman,
but what can we do to share color labels??

Also will we still have a problem if we have both 2003 and 2007 users?

Thanks and Regards
Anna