Forum Discussion
need to turn off time line on 365 Outlook Calendar
Today for no reason I started seeing a line that runs from the left of my Work Week Calendar to the Current Day of the week. This line moves down with the time of day. It is very hard to see items on my calendar when ever it crosses in the middle of an appointment. Need to turn this off. Once again it just showed up in the middle of the day today. I have attached a screen shot showing what I mean with an arrow point to the line
Agree this time indicator line amounts to nothing more than a confusing visual distraction. The line draws the eye more to the past than the present. There really isn't a logical connection between events at 2:30 on Monday and Tuesday with a 2:30 meeting on Wednesday , so why force the eye to traverse the line thru Monday and Tuesday to get to Wednesday? This is distracting and makes no sense. I've waited months to make this remark hoping I could just finally ignore the time indicator line, but I can't. It's sitting right there sucking up visual focus like a fly on the screen. Even when I switch to show just Today, there's the black half dot, the darkest, most punctuated thing on the screen and it's obscuring the availability indicator too. It needs to leave.
I logged after the weekend to find my Outlook had been upgraded, and I can't figure out how this made it through any quality control, the Blue Horizontal Time Bar you could easily decipher at a glance what meetings were coming up and there was no guess work. I usually have multiple meetings in the same Time Slot so the horizontal line helped greatly. This black half moon is worthless, it has no accuracy and provides no Visual benefit. An option to enable one or the other would of been better.
- A big +1 from me. As others have also stated this new "time indicator" format is quite misleading. The "current time" indicator line should only be on the current day in week view.
- +1 for me, too. The time line is confusing - it draws your attention to the previous day rather than the current day. Even if there were users who found the line useful, I don't see why there isn't an option to turn it off.
100% agree with complaints about this new line showing time that covers the previous days of the week. And the black circle at the end of the line, but to the left of today's column, draws your attention to the previous day. Visually distracting. Unhelpful. Makes me look at previous day. Awful.
I have to force myself visually to look past it to today's column.
I suggest a simple black line, only on the currect day, and if they want to put black dots on it, then put them either side of the line on today's date.
The time bar indicator is terrible design. Rather than helping me stay centered on my day and tasks, it creates a little disconnect (a little hurdle to get over) every time I go to my calendar. Add up all of the times I look at my calendar in a day/week/month/year...and that's a significant distraction.
Do the right thing Microsoft and give users the ability to turn it off. It's worse than not helping, it's creating problems.
- This new feature is so annoying. I searched Outlook help an even the registry for "time bar" or "timebar" and I can't find how to disable it. I have dyslexia and it's hard enough reading the calendar view as is. I don't need text near the things I'm trying to read obfuscated by a black bar and large black circle.
Please give us an option to disable this invasive feature. I would like to se the calendar without the timeline and just as out of office and previous days a greyed out background following the time of the day indicating the time.
Then you wouldn't cover the appointment's with the timeline, on the same time as its clear what time it is and what's the upcoming appointment.
You could even have the timeline on the day and just put it under the appointments if there was a little gap on the sides of the appointments so the timeline is not covered completely.
I don't know how many times I've looked on the previous day and missed an appointment whit the current layout, its very confusing to have the timeline on the previous day.
/Michael
- I wish this would let me post a picture of what this looks like on my screen. I have three items starting at 8 AM and because this line runs across all three of them none of them can be read. Please MS, just let us turn the line off if we want! Please!
This is a bad feature. I don't remember what the other way was before this, but this is very annoying. I use a daily calendar at 30 minute intervals. It's not so bad at 15 min intervals, but that takes up way too much space. Why does M$SOFT think we need this with no option to disable it? I have clock on my computer that tells me the time, I have a wall clock in front of me. We all have smart phones, watches, calendar reminder pop ups etc.
- Agreed. This line is a stupid, ANNOYING, AGGRAVATING feature. Why it is still there after all these years makes absolutely no sense.
That is the new current time and day indicator that replaces the old method. Just like the old implementation, there is no way to turn this off.
As it serves a useful purpose as well and it might only be an issue when you are looking at a past item at a very specific time, a quick workaround would be to hover on the affected item so that the details will show in a pop-up.
RobertSparnaaij I don't know if you work for Microsoft - as a suggestion it would be more useful to show the current time line on Today -rather than project it backwards with the only indicator for Today being a half circle on the LH margin??
I have never understood the microsoft (Our way or the high way) approach, where they just change something because they can, giving users no options to use what the user would prefer.
Not sure what "useful purpose" this gives but I do agree with the others, it's annoying and end users should have the option between obscuring appointments and seeing what time it is.
- If you work for Microsoft, please recommend removal of this terribly poor design feature. I've missed meetings because it draws my eye to the day prior, not the current day. It is an unnecessary, unhelpful distraction.
