About this lesson
Color-Coding calendar items is known as “prioritizing”. Use this feature to produce at-a-glance decisions about your daily grind.
Lesson versions
Multiple versions of this lesson are available, choose the appropriate version for you:
2016, 2019.
Quick reference
Color Code Appointments
Applying Color to appointments is a good way to prioritize for at-a-glance recognition of topics.
When to use
By default, your calendar will look the same for every appointment. Applying color will eliminate the tedious visual review and give at-a-glance decision making about your day or week easier and faster.
Instructions
Show As
- The first level of color code is the Show As settings.
- Right-click an appointment and choose a Show As option.
- Once applied, the left edge of the appointment will change its color or pattern.
Categorize
- The 2nd level of color coding is manually applying category colors to individual appointments or meetings.
- Right-click an appoint and choose Categorize then choose a color or select All Categories for more color options.
- This method applies color to an individual appointment and will not repeat itself automatically.
- The All Categories section can be customized to Rename the colors with your own topics.
Conditional formatting
- The 3rd level of color coding is applying a Conditional Format to automatically color an appointment based on a word typed into the subject line.
- Right-click a blank area of the calendar and choose View Settings.
- OR Select the View ribbon and choose View Settings.
- Select “Conditional Formatting”
- Click Add and type the name of this rule.
- Select a color.
- Click Condition or this will not work!
- Enter the condition (words) that will trigger the color
Note: If using multiple trigger words, use a comma between them; without a comma it will treat it like a phrase.
- If the appointment did not change color, there may be a couple of reasons:
- Is the trigger word spelled correctly? Check your settings again.
- Did you already apply a Category color on the appointment? A manual category color will ALWAYS override the automatic color.
- To confirm, right-click the appoint and select Categorize, Clear All Categories.
- 00:04 Color coding is pretty important for two levels.
- 00:07 First of all your own sanity to color code all your appointments, and
- 00:11 for other people who are trying to schedule you.
- 00:13 So let's start there.
- 00:14 There is a base level color coding.
- 00:16 If you'll see the left-hand panel of all these appointments have little
- 00:19 blue banners.
- 00:20 This one has just a darker purple banner, this one has a really dark purple banner.
- 00:25 This one has a clear banner on the left.
- 00:28 I'll go ahead and select just one of these appointments, and we have two options.
- 00:31 We can look above where it says Show As, and we can change it to Free, Tentative,
- 00:35 Busy, or Out of Office, or I could right-click.
- 00:38 And I have the same Show As, and I could tell this one Out of Office.
- 00:41 That just signals to anyone else trying to schedule you that you are not available.
- 00:46 You're actually off-site, because on that scheduling calendar that we saw earlier,
- 00:50 these will show up this purple or white if you're available.
- 00:52 All right, let's switch over now to your own color code system.
- 00:56 So when you want to schedule maybe this first one, I want to schedule this.
- 01:00 So I'm going to do a right click, go to Categorize, and
- 01:03 I'm simply going to color this training, because I've already set up,
- 01:07 in my All Categories I've set up certain ones.
- 01:09 I can click one, I can rename it, I can create a new one.
- 01:13 I've got 25 colors to choose from, you can design your entire system yourself.
- 01:17 And these are just the names of the colors.
- 01:20 And over the months and years, you'll change these names accordingly,
- 01:23 regardless.
- 01:24 I'm going to go ahead and make this one red for Training, and there it is.
- 01:28 I manually applied this color, and over here on the right and
- 01:31 manually applied this purple color as well.
- 01:33 All right, so the way it sounds right now, I look at this calendar and
- 01:36 I've got to read each of these blue ones and decide how important they are.
- 01:40 I would rather have the color just tell me how important these things are.
- 01:44 All right, so let's go ahead and do that.
- 01:47 If it's training, that means I'm off site and I have to be formally dressed.
- 01:51 So I want all my training to be a dark green.
- 01:54 So let's go ahead and change that.
- 01:56 Instead of a right click and changing just the categorized,
- 01:59 I'm going to right-click in a blank area of my calendar, just right click, and
- 02:04 nowhere do you see color coding.
- 02:06 This color means change the color of my calendar.
- 02:08 Now, I actually want to change Automated Settings, and that is under View Settings.
- 02:13 It is not intuitive, it does not make sense.
- 02:16 You just have to learn this and remember this and come back and
- 02:19 read the handouts again.
- 02:20 So, I'm going to right-click on a blank spot, I'm going to click on View Settings.
- 02:24 And right over here, there's an option that says Conditional Formatting.
- 02:27 I want to color my calendar items based on the condition I set.
- 02:31 Click.
- 02:32 All right, let's go and hit Add, I want to add a brand new rule.
- 02:37 I call this my Training rule, and what do I want to apply to my training rule?
- 02:42 I want green to be applied and I have to set up a condition.
- 02:46 If you do not hit the condition nothing will happen.
- 02:48 Remember, that word Training here is what I named the rule, it's not my condition.
- 02:53 Okay, go ahead and hit Condition.
- 02:55 Now what do I want to signal the gree?
- 02:59 Let's see, training, class.
- 03:02 I think that's it.
- 03:04 Training or class, all right.
- 03:06 Go ahead and hit OK, hit OK, hit OK, and
- 03:09 at least one of these is going to turn green.
- 03:12 Click OK again, and there it is because the word class is there.
- 03:16 Well, what about this Excel class?
- 03:18 Well, that was manually colored by myself.
- 03:21 You see, automated coloring will not override your manual coloring because
- 03:26 you are ultimately the boss, you are the one in charge here.
- 03:30 So if you decide you don't want that green you can right-click and
- 03:32 turn in a different color.
- 03:34 Well, in this case I do want it to be green.
- 03:36 So I'm going to right-click, go to my Categorize, and
- 03:39 I'm going to clear all categories.
- 03:42 Now when I clear that red, by default it should go back to green because I already
- 03:46 set up that condition, click.
- 03:48 And there it is, it turned green.
- 03:50 All right, let's do another one.
- 03:51 I want my meetings to be a different color, so I'm go going to right-click, go
- 03:56 to my View Settings, go to my Conditional Format, go ahead and add a brand new one.
- 04:01 This is going to be my meetings, and I want my meetings to be bright yellow.
- 04:05 What is the condition?
- 04:07 I want the word meeting, and sometimes I abbreviate with the MTG, hit OK.
- 04:12 Hit OK, hit OK.
- 04:15 Now all my meetings are bright yellow except for this purple one,
- 04:18 because I manually colored that.
- 04:19 Right-click, categorize, clear those and it turns yellow.
- 04:24 There you go.
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