James Governor's Monkchips

Annoying Outlook bugfeature: defaulting the day as free when its an all day event

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Not a new bug (feature?) I know, but it just hit me again, when i scheduled a meeting with a client the other day, only to realise today that I do already have something else scheduled for that day – a Microsoft Vista event.

If the event is all day why on earth default to “free”. If I am there all day I am probably busier than usual, not ready for other events or calls. Its a very odd useability choice.

Maybe someone will ping me and let me know how to change the preferences of this “feature”. However given that our email host ASP-One has utterly porked us, which means I have now been using the OWA client for nearly two weeks, I am not sure I can change that setting even if I wanted to.

Just a small rant. I feel better now.

2 comments

  1. This has come up so often but it appears that there’s never been a change. About the best option I’ve come across would be to create a custom form for all day events with the status forced to Busy:

    http://www.windowsitpro.com/MicrosoftExchangeOutlook/Article/ArticleID/37535/37535.html

  2. I imagine the “thinking” (such as it was) probably involved using all-day for events like birthdays that are, indeed, all-day events but don’t actually take up time directly. But I find the default annoying as well.

    I also wish that there were another category in addition to Busy and Out-of-Office. Those don’t really capture mobility well–i.e. the difference between out-of-office busy and not in the office but available.

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