Windows 8.1: The Missing Manual

Calendar

Calendar is not so different from those “Hunks of the Midwest Police Stations” paper calendars that people leave hanging on the walls for months past their natural life span.

But 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 workouts.

• Calendar can give you a gentle nudge (with a sound and a message) when an important appointment is approaching.

• It can subscribe to online calendars from Outlook, Hotmail, or even your company’s Exchange calendar, so you have all your life’s agendas in one place.

Note

There may already be stuff on your calendar the first time you open it—if, elsewhere in Windows, you’ve already entered account information for an online account. For example, if you’ve entered your Facebook details, then all your friends’ birthdays appear in Calendar automatically. You can, of course, turn off one account or another; read on.

That said, you may find that Calendar is among the simplest, most bare-bones calendar programs ever written. At least it won’t overwhelm you.

Working with Views

When you open Calendar, you see something like Figure 4-3 (a Microsoft account is required). On the App bar (The App Bar) shown at top in the figure, you can switch among these views:

Figure 4-3. The Windows 8 calendar is very, very simple. Switch views using the App bar, shown ...