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Outlook desktop client - showing multiple months of calendar in To-Do bar

Brass Contributor

"In the old days" you could show as many months of calendar in the to-do bar space as the width would allow.  As you dragged the width wider, more months would fill in.

 

Now no matter how wide you make the screen real estate, only one month is visible.

 

My screenshot below makes it clear what I'm saying.  The yellow spaces used to show the month before and after the "primary" month that was currently displayed in the main window.

As I don't think this is a setting, Microsoft please consider this a suggestion -- to bring back the described functionality as it was until at least Outlook 2013 if not even more recent.

Thanks.

 

Calendar.jpg

33 Replies

I've never had the need to add more months, but pinging @Julia Foran as she can give you the authoritative answer on this :)

The presentation I describe existed until not that many major release levels ago..  Outlook 2013 maybe? 

 

It's very convenient, when counting days across months or being able to drill down to a date on a previous or following month without first having to move the single month with the little back or forward months buttons.

It does certainly make sense - all that useless screen real estate..  I size that column at least wide enough to make it useful to show the to-do list below -- if it's narrow like one month then the upcoming appt and todo listaren't really usable -- so my desired handling -- "the way it used to be" --  is pretty logical.

I've attached a couple more screen grabs.  Note that when the column is only wide enough for the single month showing the upcoming and todo are pretty truncated.  When wide enough for upcoming and todo to be useful, then there's that pesky whitespace (yellow in my sample) just screaming out for more months to show!  :)

I genuinely appreciate having this easy access to the real team at Microsoft - makes it worth my time to report and discuss my suggestions and concerns!!

/j

 

 2018-03-20 01_11_47.jpg 2018-03-20 01_12_13.jpg

You don't have to convince me, after all everyone has it's own way of work, and if the feature is useful to you it's fair to ask where did it go. I added Julia to the thread as she's the authority on anything Calendar related, so perhaps she would know if this was deliberately removed or replaced by some other functionality. Other than that, I can advise you to post this as feedback over at UserVoice: https://outlook.uservoice.com/forums/322590-outlook-2016-for-windows

best response confirmed by LagunaJim (Brass Contributor)
Solution

Hi Jim -- this is getting traction on the UserVoice page, which in turn will bring more attention to this change in functionality. Could you go vote for it here please? https://outlook.uservoice.com/forums/322590-outlook-2016-for-windows/suggestions/11596416-allow-mult...

 

Adding @Jennifer Lu as FYI (the PM for Windows Outlook calendar).

For a while I thought I was imagining tha tthis used to be a feature. now i know i'm not crazy. While procrastinating some other thing, I decided to google how to get 2 months visible on the to-do bar and came across this post.   I agree with you. MS needs to bring that that functionality. i don't even understand why they took it away. :(

Any progress on this request? The traction continues to be high volume @Julia Foran 

I agree. I used it view to the last couple of months at a high level and count the weeks @LagunaJim 

I find there are a lot of Office settings that have changed and went away with 365. The jury is still out on whether or not I like it better. I would think they would maintain previous functionality at a minimum. I have spent so much time Googling how to do this or that. It's frustrating to say the least.

@Julia Foran Any update for this request? :) 

 

Hi, we have just started coding this feature request. I do not yet have a timeline for release yet though.

Thanks, Julia
Good news! Sounds promising! :)

Thanks for the update :thumbs_up:

@Julia Foran If this is still being developed, I'd like to add to the feature request. Through Outlook 2013, you could drag an email to a date and it would open a New Appointment window on that date with the email text in the body. This was really useful...

@Julia Foran 

in outlook 2016, the to do pane was able to show multiple month, for some reason it has been remove in Outlook 2019. I said to myself, I might not be doing the right set up and started to look for solution and found that there is a plug in which is existing, it is allowing to do such thing but requiring to pay for a license...

Strange that nice features like this one, tend to disappear without consulting customers...

Have a nice day

 

Roger

Hi Jim,

It may not answer all your questions, but there is a plug in which allows you to have multiple months on the to do pane. It is done by puresoft...unfortunately you have to pay for it, alternatively there is a trial period...if you go down a couple of month ago, on this forum, I have a screen shot of it.

@LagunaJim    @vikramkulkarni @Julia Foran @rogerpalmierioutlook  

 

I'm very late to this discussion, but yesterday, on two of my PC's, multiple months started showing in Outlook 365! Version 2109 (Build 14430.20298 ) An old Surface Pro (4-5 yrs old) and a Desktop PC.
On my Surface Pro 7, with a diffferent version (Ver 2109 Build 14430 20306), it is not showing...still only the 1 month.

And here is the picture to prove it

GeoffLCS_0-1634329364336.png

 

Has anyone else seen this? I really like the idea of multiple months being able to be shown!

@GeoffLCS I moved myself to the beta channel just for this feature!

@MarkMagee Interestingly, this started showing up. I'm not on a the Beta Channel as far as I can tell. But great if it's coming soon then.
Got the same now, seems after recent update. Just curious if I can customize this setting to display only 1 month as on a smaller screen this is shown in a column and no place for upcoming events from the calendar.
1 best response

Accepted Solutions
best response confirmed by LagunaJim (Brass Contributor)
Solution

Hi Jim -- this is getting traction on the UserVoice page, which in turn will bring more attention to this change in functionality. Could you go vote for it here please? https://outlook.uservoice.com/forums/322590-outlook-2016-for-windows/suggestions/11596416-allow-mult...

 

Adding @Jennifer Lu as FYI (the PM for Windows Outlook calendar).

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