You can also assign shortcut keys to up to 11 categories to simplify applying categories. Categories can also be applied to email from the Home ribbon and meetings from the Meeting tab. To apply additional categories, right-click and select a new category. Under Categorize, select the category to apply. Right-click on the email, appointment, task or contact to apply a category. What do you want to be able to tell at a glance? Do you want to know whether your meetings are internal ones, ones with the client, or ones with the court? Set up a category for each of those.įor example, if internal meetings are yellow, client meetings are red, and hearings are blue, just by glancing at your Outlook calendar, you’ll know what types of meetings are in store for you. When setting up categories, think about ways you’d like to color-code your calendar (or emails, tasks and contacts). Either rename those to something meaningful to you or delete them and start from scratch. Outlook contains categories like red, blue and yellow out of the box. Whichever way you open the categories dialog, from Categorize, select All Categories… at the bottom of the list. You can also find them by right-clicking on an email, appointment, task or contact. From your calendar, click on an appointment to open the Meeting tab where you’ll find categories.

- click on Settings (i.e.From your email, categories are found on the Home ribbon.

- click the (down triangle) beside “Categorize” in ribbon.

- click the red “close” button in the upper-left corner of the window to close and save changes.

- select the new color from the drop-down menu that appears.

- click on the color dot beside the category that you wish to change.

- click the (down-triangle) beside “Categorize” in ribbon.

- choose a new color from the “Color” drop-down menu on the right of window.

- click on the (down triangle) beneath “Categories” in ribbon.- repeat as desired to change other categories.- choose a new color from the “Color” drop-down menu on right of window.- click on (down triangle) next to “Categories” in ribbon.

Unfortunately, due to limiations within Outlook, there is no way to automatically synchronize color information from device to device.) Tagging an item with a 'purple' category on your device and sharing the item with someone does not guarantee that it will be 'purple' on their device. (Note: Color selections are defined 'locally' on an individual's computing device or within a specific account on one. This document provides the step-by-step instructions to edit category colors to your liking. Categories within Outlook make it easy to group related items - emails, events, people - so that they're easier to find.Īpplying colors (or editing the default color selections) allow you to more easily spot and recognize related items at a glance, to improve efficiency.

Color categories in outlook calendar