To-Do Bar Not Displaying Appointment Automatic Formatting

[Chris]

I have set up automatic formatting rules (ie. color coding) of appointments
which work great in the main calendar view, but it is not appearing in the
To-Do Bar. What's wrong?

 

[Jocelyn Fiorello [MVP - Outlook]]

I was going to say that Day/Week/Month view in the Calendar doesn't support
Automatic Formatting, but lo and behold, it looks like that option is
available in Outlook 2007. I can't get it to work, however, so please
explain how you have the automatic rule set up, and where the formatting
appears. If you're not in the Day/Week/Month view, then the answer to your
question is that the To Do Bar uses the formatting in Day/Week/Month view for
Calendar items, so it wouldn't have the same Automatic Formatting settings as
your other Calendar view.

--
Jocelyn Fiorello
MVP - Outlook

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[Chris]

This is what I did:

1) Swtiched to Calendar
2) View pulldown > Current View > Day/Week/Month
3) Right-clicked on the calendar background and chose "Automatic
Formatting..."
4) Clicked "Add" button and called it "Meetings"
5) Set a Color (i.e. Blue)
6) Clicked "Add" button and called it "Important Meetings"
7) Set a Color (i.e. Red)
8) Clicked "Condition..." and added specific people in the Attendees field.
9) Clicked "OK"

Result: My appointments colored per my settings--blue and red.

Problem: The color coding is not refleced in the To-Do Bar.

 

[Jocelyn Fiorello [MVP - Outlook]]

OK -- after playing with it for a while I got the automatic formatting to
work in the calendar itself, but only under certain conditions. If the item
was assigned to a category, the category color overrides the automatic
formatting color. And I can't get automatic formatting to work at all on
recurring all-day events (it works on recurring appointments, though).

You are correct, though, that even if it works in the Calendar, it isn't
working in the ToDo Bar. I am going to see if I can find out if this is a
known issue...in the meantime, why not just use categories for your meetings,
so the colors do show up on the ToDo Bar?

--
Jocelyn Fiorello
MVP - Outlook

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[Jocelyn Fiorello [MVP - Outlook]]

The official answer to your question (by another Outlook MVP) is that the
ToDo Bar has its own views and formats...so although some may match those of
the original folders, others will not. If you need the colorization in the
ToDo Bar to match the calendar items' colors, you'll need to use the Category
colors.

--
Jocelyn Fiorello
MVP - Outlook

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[Chris]

Thanks for the reply Jocelyn. So just to be clear, I'd have to manually
apply Categories to calendar items, and not be able to utilize Automatic
Formatting to apply a color?

Just for future, the use case is that any meeting that includes certain
people or aliases are colored by the rules.

Thanks again--
Chris

 

[Jocelyn Fiorello [MVP - Outlook]]

Yes, you would hav eto manually assign categories to the messages, unless you
can figure out a way to run a macro or something to assign the categories
when a certain person is on the attendee list. That's beyond my expertise


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Jocelyn Fiorello
MVP - Outlook

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