Dear Crabby: Printing overlaid calendars

You know that in Outlook 2010 and 2007 you can have more than one calendar and that you can view all of your calendars together in a couple of different ways. (If you don't, the table below provides links that tell you how to do that.) For instance, I have three different calendars: one for work, one for personal, and one for birthdays only. I usually just want to see my work calendar when I'm at work but sometimes I want to get a snap shot of all my calendars together (if only to see what a mess I've made of my schedule and how I've overbooked myself...yet again).

In that case, instead of seeing my calenders one at a time, I can view them side-by-side or overlaid (again, the table below will show you how to do that).

An issue pops up when I want to print them all in overlaid mode. There is really no way to do that from within Outlook. I didn't know this until Scott, an IT specialist wrote to me to ask about it. With a little research I found this little gem: the Calendar Printing Assistant, which lets you print dynamic calendar views (including overlaid) and adjust information to changing views. It's one flexible little program.

Although Scott told me that at first he was hesitant to use this program (he thought that it should be integral to Outlook), he soon realized that the Calendar Printing Assistant is part of Office Tools (meaning that after you download and install it, it will appear in your programs list under Microsoft Office > Office Tools). So, did he like the program? His own words:

"Okay I tested out the Calendar Printing Assistant and I have to say, I really like this solution. It has several types of templates that one can choose from in the headings one would expect: Day, Week, Month and Year; it’s very intuitive. In the calendar area in the left pane is a link toward the bottom that you can use to add calendars. Those new calendars will show up on the right and by double clicking on them they are “imported” to the left pane for inclusion into your existing calendar. Each calendar you import in this way can be assigned its own color and will also have a corresponding bullet shape next to each appointment on a given calendar.

Also, all your corporate calendars can be added and simply selected or deselected to add or remove the appointments for a given calendar from the template that you choose. This is a very nice application for viewing multiple calendars on a single sheeted view. Another nice feature is that you do not have to print the entire year, week or month if you do not wish to. When you tell the calendar to print you can specify a date range to print making this little addition to Office very nice indeed. Very useful in an office that manages time by way of Outlook calendars and shared Outlook calendars."

So, hey, don't take my word for it; Scott was not coached by me nor was he sent a Kinect for XBox 360 for his trouble.

Crabby's Find of the Day: Making amends in the digital age

— Crabby

More info on calendar printing:

Cool Trick: Calendar Printing

Calendar Printing Assistant for Outlook