Print/Paper Friendly "Calendar Review" Tools

[pod-boss]

I like to see my a whole month's calendar on one-page when I'm doing my weekly review, and I'm wondering if anyone else does this too?

Right now, I use Outlook (Office 365) for my calendar. It's OK for doing this (I print 1 month/page on legal size paper) but appointment titles get cut-off and you cannot overlay two different calendars (which I would like to be able to do).

Any thoughts? Would consider replacing Outlook

 

[Tinab123]

There are a number of ways to tweak the way Outlook prints- it takes some playing with font size and print settings to get it to print to my satisfaction. If I have many appointments on a given day, they do sometimes get cut off in the traditional monthly printout no matter what I do. Monthly Outlook works best as an overview on the screen, and weekly printing yields better results IMO.

When I really need to see the whole month, I resort to getting a ruler, drawing boxes and writing it out manually in my notebook. Once conference calls and meetings start moving around, it gets messy so I use pencil unless I know it won't change. Not a very elegant solution but, it allows my brain time to think & process as I write it all down.

 

[RS356]

When I need to print a monthly view in Outlook, I limit the included events to those that are all day only. I have a separate view that lists all events/appointments for the month in an agenda list format. It's somewhat cumbersome, which is why I prefer a weekly format. I find myself using a paper calendar more these days.

Hope this helps!

 

[John Ismyname]

Hi Pod-Boss; consider doing your weekly reviews, on your computer screen. When you do this in the Outlook monthly view, you see six weeks per screen view and you can scroll week-by-week. In the monthly view, when there are more items on a date than Outlook can display, there is a downward arrow that you can click on to see the day-view. In Calendar, I am constantly shifting between the daily, weekly and monthly view. For my weekly review, I find the best view to be the weekly with the time period increments set to hourly. As, I update my calendar into a journal/diary, this view shows me how I spent my time over the last week.

 

[devon.marie]

I like to see my a whole month's calendar on one-page when I'm doing my weekly review, and I'm wondering if anyone else does this too?

Right now, I use Outlook (Office 365) for my calendar. It's OK for doing this (I print 1 month/page on legal size paper) but appointment titles get cut-off and you cannot overlay two different calendars (which I would like to be able to do).

Any thoughts? Would consider replacing Outlook

Are you sure you cannot overlay two calendars? There should be an arrow next to the name of the calendars that when clicked, pops the calendar into the same frame as the one next to it, overlaying them together.

Have you considered just printing weekly lists, for the entire month? I think that might help with having too many appointments in one day, as they'll have the entire paper height to work with. Won't help with names that are longer, though. I wonder why calendars have such an issue wrapping the title to a new line?

 

[John Ismyname]

Chirmer is correct that you can overlay two calendars in Outlook. This feature has its uses - I can overlay the Outlook calendar of my main client (who is similar to an employer) with my primary outlook calendar. With this composite view, I am still limited to a maximum of four outlook items per day. There are two ways to deal with this limitation. First, be aware of how outlook selects the four calendar items for the day that will display in the monthly view - Outlook first uses all-day event calendar items and determines these items based an alphabetic sort from the ASCII table. Thus, if i want an Outlook all day item to be displayed here - I will start the subject line with the character "!"

The second way to deal with this limitation is to run a secondary Outlook calendar. On this calendar I keep (among other things) "nice to know" information that is day-specific that I do not want to clog the view of my primary calendar. After all, GTD is all about keeping the calendar 'sacred'. For example, birthdays and special event days that are not holidays (like Valentine's day), and holidays in other countries. (I am Canadian. When the USA has a statutory holiday, it effects Canadian commerce.) let's say it is your friend's birthday and you want to call her or email him. When this day comes up I see it in my secondary calendar and an Outlook task comes up - both of these are automatically re-occurring annual Outlook items! I also have July 4th as an American holiday to remind me not to expect phone call or emails to Americans to be answered that day.