OT Populating an Outlook calendar in one go.

If I wanted to populate an Outlook 2003 calendar with a years worth of
diaried meetings (about 30, some over multiple days) and also allow many
others to do the same without having to email out each event to each
individual how would I do it?

The meetings don't follow any fixed pattern and are various different
committees, bodies, conferences etc.

 

Create one meeting and drag and drop whilst holding down the CTRL key?

Another way, which I've not tried, is create a CSV file with the
following fields:

Subject,Start Date,Start Time,End Date,End Time,All day event,Reminder
on/off,Reminder Date,Reminder Time,Meeting Organizer,Required
Attendees,Optional Attendees,Meeting Resources,Billing
Information,Categories,Description,Location,Mileage,Priority,Private,Sen
sitivity,Show time as

and for each row below, enter the relevant details and then import it
into your calendar.

You'll need to play around with it for a while as there are fields that
use TRUE/FALSE (like "All day event", "reminder" and "private") Other
fields should be self explanatory.

 

Do you know where I can find any information on this method? Can I have
one file containing all the appointments which can then be imported?

Does an application exist for building such a file?

 

Put the information into Outlook, then export it...

 

export/import a CSV.

The technically simplest way would be to manually create the 30
meetings in one Outlook, then export these, then re-import them on
everyone else's machine.

You could manually create the CSV, but you might find it a pain. If
you do, use excel for this - if you really want to go this way, email
me and I'll explain how you need to format the file.

 

that was my suggestion - probably quicker for 30 meetings (though
maybe not for 300, IYSWIM).

 

Using the patented Mavis Beacon "Hunt&Peck" Technique, darsy

*Waves*

Is that email in your headers valid?

--
Wicked Uncle Nigel - "He's hopeless, but he's honest"

WS* GHPOTHUF#24 APOSTLE#14 DLC#1 COFF#20 BOTAFOT#150 HYPO#0(KoTL) IbW#41
SBS#39 OMF#6 Enfield 500 Curry House Racer "The Basmati Rice Burner",
Honda GL1000K2 (Fallen apart) Suzuki TS250 "The Africa Single"
Norton 850 Commando Kawasaki GTR1400

 

it's really pretty straightforward. Sweller drives trains, makes tea
and shouts at people, but I thought you were a technical fellah...

yes.

 

Using the patented Mavis Beacon "Hunt&Peck" Technique, darsy

Well, but I'm a *lazy* techie fellah. It'll save me googling and I have
to do something similar to interface an ancient release of Egroupware to
Outlook.

Kewl.

--
Wicked Uncle Nigel - "He's hopeless, but he's honest"

WS* GHPOTHUF#24 APOSTLE#14 DLC#1 COFF#20 BOTAFOT#150 HYPO#0(KoTL) IbW#41
SBS#39 OMF#6 Enfield 500 Curry House Racer "The Basmati Rice Burner",
Honda GL1000K2 (Fallen apart) Suzuki TS250 "The Africa Single"
Norton 850 Commando Kawasaki GTR1400

 

That would be 30 different exported files?

Actually there's more than 30 appointments - not 300 but still enough to
be a pain so I'd like to be able to make a single file that can be
imported by the Outlook illiterate.

 

I'm talking about one file with the field names in the first row and
then n rows of data. I produced a quick sample file for WUN; if you
want a copy, drop me an email to remind me - address in the headers is
valid.

The one thing that does need to be done multiple times is the imports
- i.e. each person needs to run the import wizard (but it's easy, and
takes about 5 minutes tops).