How to Schedule Meetings Using Outlook

If you need to use Microsoft Outlook’s calendar feature to schedule meetings, you’ve come to the right place. Follow this step-by-step guide to creating an appointment, turning it into a meeting, and inviting the right people along.

How to Schedule Meetings Using Outlook — Step-by-Step

Step 1: Open Outlook and click the Calendar icon on the left-hand side.

Step 2: Decide a date and time for your meeting. Click on that date and then double-click the time slot you want to use. Note: You can also right-click the time slot and select New Meeting Request.

Step 3: You should now see a separate window in which you can enter all the relevant meeting information. Create a title for your meeting and use the drop-down menu next to End time to choose the length of the meeting.

Step 4: Optional — add additional information to the main text box if required.

Step 5: To invite people to this meeting, click on the Invite Attendees icon at the top of the appointment window. This creates a From section (your email) and Required and Optional attendee sections.

Step 6: Enter the email addresses of the people you want to come to the meeting in the relevant sections.

Step 7: Add a location to your meeting so attendees know where to come. If your organization has dedicated meeting rooms, your IT team may have implemented a Room Finder. However, if clicking this button doesn’t bring up any new information, you will have to manually type in your location, as shown.

Step 8: Decide whether you want to have this meeting as a one-off or on a recurring basis. If you need to have the same meeting weekly or monthly, click the blue Make Recurring icon. It has two curved arrows as its icon.

Step 9: Edit your recurring meeting options. You can choose how often you want the meeting and if you want it to recur indefinitely or end after a specific amount of time. In this instance, the user has chosen a series of eight monthly meetings, always on a Wednesday afternoon for half an hour.

Step 10: Click OK to confirm your meeting recurrence information. Double-check all the meeting information is correct and click Send. Helpfully, Outlook will notify you if you have created a meeting with attendees but forgotten to send it.

Using Outlook to schedule meetings in this way means your recipients receive the invite as an email. They accept or decline and, if they are also Outlook users, when they accept, the meeting is automatically added to their calendar. Your calendar will automatically show who has confirmed their attendance.

Top tip: If the meeting time or date becomes unsuitable, you can edit it at any time by opening the meeting in the calendar and manually adjusting it. Recipients may also suggest an alternative time in their response. Finally, you can always change the recurrences of a meeting by clicking the blue Edit Recurrence button, found at the end of the recurrence details on the meeting window.