Microsoft Outlook: Change delete recurring events appointments without losing history

Google calendar has one very good facility- if you want to change details about any appointment, which is part of recurring event series, it provides options to change a) only that event, b) all events in the series, c) only the future events.

This option c) is not available with Outlook. So for example, if you want to shift all the future events by 1 hour later (lets say to handle winter light saving changes), the timing for all the past instances would also get changed. Also, you would end up losing notes & any other changes you might have put in them. 

Solution? Till Microsoft incorporates this feature, a bit complicated procedure is needed. This post gives the  details, a little update version would be as the following.

i) Make one temporary Outlook Calendar (Temp). 

iii) View your regular Outlook Calendar (Regular) in Category view. This will show all events as a list.

iv) Drag the event-sereis (for which future events need to be changed) to Temp. 

v) Open Temp and export it to one MS-Excel file Excel).

vi) Open Excel. It would have all events in the series as separate rows. Change the particular entry (timing for example) for future events. Or better delete all future events and later make a new series for them in Outlook. Save Excel and close it.

vii) Import the Excel into Temp calendar.

viii) View Temp in category view. Drag the events into Regular.

ix) Delete Temp and Excel.
x) Create a new series for future events with changed timing & other details.

Note: 

1) If you use Calendar in your local PST, then the global Calendar of your exchange account can also be used as Temp- or vice versa. This would save the time of creating another calendar and then later deleting it.

2) The post mentioned above gives almost the same procedure except that it doesn't use Temp calendar. The problem with that method is that all other appointment series also get into Excel and in the process are broken into individual appointments when imported back.

I hope this helps others. If you can find some other less cumbersome process, please let me know in comments. And lets pray that MS makes this change in Outlook, the Net is full of such requests already.

How to compare two versions of MS-Word documents

MS-Word has inbuilt facility for this.For Office 2007 or higher, in English, directly refer to this link.

Since a number of my friends use Dutch version of Office 2003, the following can help.

- Open any one of the versions (A) of the document. Typically this would be the initial version, on top of which chagnes are made,
- Go to Tools menu and click on 'Compare & Merge Documents' ('Documenten Vergelijken en Samenvoegen' in Dutch- see picture below),
- In the upcoming dialog box, select the other version (B) of the document, click Ok;
- Another dialog box will open to ask in which version (A or B) we would want to see the changes marked. Choose as per your choice. By default it would be A.
- Click Ok. You would see all changes marked in the chosen document in track-change mode.

Putting inline comments in mails

Usually we need to put inline comments while replying to mails. Its always useful to put our name in the beginning of such remarks, with special font so that the remark stands out.

Microsoft Outlook can do it automatically for us, as given below

The outlook setting is fairly simple.

Go to Tools --> Options --> Click on Emailoptions

(my screenshots are for Dutch version of MS Office).

In the two drop-downs asking for options on inline comments, make proper choice. Also indicate how you would want your name to be marked before the comments.

Click Ok. Done!

Secure print using MS-Office

It usually happens in office that I need to print some confidential document. For such cases, the only option with me is to click the Print button and then run to the printer.
Recently I got to know from my colleague Alex that a very useful facility for this is available in Office suite for quite some time.

It's very simple- while printing you can provide a one-time password. The printer would print the document only when you have provided that password on the printer itself. Of course, you can use this only if the printer in your office/ home has option to input password, but most modern printers come with this facility.

For step by step instructions
Click File --> Print. Then on the pop-up window, click Properties button, select 'Page Setup' tab, and then select 'Secure Print' from the Output Method drop-dpwn.