Keeping your personal and professional lives in balance is crucial. However, it can sometimes be hard for remote workers to manage their work time while maintaining their personal lives.
Luckily, Outlook calendar added the time away from office function to resolve the problem. With this, anyone can block off non-working time in their Outlook calendar so people won’t try to book them.
This article will show you how to block time in Outlook’s calendar quickly, which will help you balance your work and private life.
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How to Block Out /Off Time in Outlook Calendar
The New Appointment tool lets you easily block out /off time in your Outlook. To get started, just create an Appointment form for the new appointment section, rename the appointment as “Out of Office,” and specify the duration of your absence and its done.
Typically, there are two ways to block time in the outlook calendar:
- Block out one-off vacations.
- Block out daily lunchtime.
One is for short but daily off time, and another is for long but infrequent periods.
In this part, I’ll walk you through blocking time in your outlook calendar for both circumstances. Let’s see how to do it.
Here are the methods for blocking time in Outlook Calendar:
1. Block Out Time for One-off Vacations
The function is most useful when you take two to three days off and travel outside town. You can also use this option when you are unwell and have a lengthy absence from work.
In this section, I’ll demonstrate how to set aside time for lengthy vacations so that your coworkers won’t ask you to complete work-related duties.
Here are the steps to block Outlook Calendar time for one-off vacations:
- Open the Outlook calendar, and go to the date you need to block the vacation time.
- Navigate to Home > New Appointment and create a new appointment.
- Insert the subject and location in the new appointment popup window as per your choice.
- Choose the Specific date range for the vacation in the Start time and End time boxes.
- Mark the box next to the All day event option.
- Choose Out of Office in Show As drop-down list from the Event ribbon.
- Click on the Event, and select Save & Close to save the event.
When you’ve finished the steps, your and your coworkers’ Outlook calendars will show your vacation time as out of the office.
Check out our separate post on mail merge in Outlook with Excel & Word.
2. Block Out Daily Noontime
This option is helpful when you wish to reserve any regular weekday hour, like lunch, in your Outlook calendar.
With the help of the feature, your coworkers can exclude you from office schedules during lunch or tea breaks.
I’ll show you how to block off time for lunch in this section so that your coworkers won’t interrupt you while you’re eating or drinking.
Here’s how to block appointments in Outlook Calendar for lunch or tea:
- Open the Outlook calendar, and go to the section you need to block lunchtime.
- Navigate to Home > New Appointment and create a new appointment.
- Insert the subject and location in the new appointment popup window as per your choice.
- Choose Out of Office in Show As drop-down list from the Event ribbon.
- Select None in the Reminder drop-down menu.
- Click on the Recurrence button.
- Specify the lunchtime in the Appointment time portion.
- Tick-mark the Daily and Every weekday option boxes from the Recurrence pattern section.
- Insert the block date range in the Range of recurrence section.
- Press the OK button.
- Go back to the appointment window.
- Choose the Appointment, then select Save & Close to save your changes.
Once you’ve finished, your coworkers and superiors can view your lunch hour on the outlook calendar during the workday.
Go through our epic guide on how to open and use a shared mailbox in Outlook?
Why is Blocking Time in Outlook Calendar Important?
Time blocking is essential to your way of life since having balance in your life improves you as a person. You must maintain both your leisure and professional schedules. Too much focus on one subject leads to stress, which nobody needs.
In this portion, I’ll demonstrate the crucial aspect of the time block functions in the Outlook calendar. Let’s begin.
Here are the reasons why time blocking is crucial in your Outlook calendar:
- Time-blocking tools can easily tell your coworkers if you are on vacation.
- The company can maintain the workers’ work schedules with the help of the time-blocking function.
- It prevents unnecessary office calls made during lunch or tea breaks.
- This function provides your company with the necessary tools to plan your work schedule and decide which tasks to assign you.
- The company can keep track of the number of vacation days you took and the number of tasks you completed in a month using Outlook’s Time Blocking tool.
The Time Blocking choices enable a healthy work-life balance and allow the company to monitor your overall performance.
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FAQs
How do I block the Outlook calendar schedule for lunchtime?
To block your Outlook calendar schedule for lunchtime, follow the steps below:
- Open the Outlook calendar, and go to the section you need to block lunchtime.
- Navigate to Home > New Appointment and create a new appointment.
- Insert the subject and location in the new appointment popup window as per your choice.
- Choose Out of Office in Show As drop-down list from the Event ribbon.
- Select None in the Reminder drop-down menu.
- Click on the Recurrence button.
- Specify the lunchtime in the Appointment time portion.
- Tick-mark the Daily and Every weekday option boxes from the Recurrence pattern section.
- Insert the block date range in the Range of recurrence section.
- Press the OK button.
- Go back to the appointment window.
- Choose the Appointment, then select Save & Close to save your changes.
Can you hide off-duty times in your Outlook calendar?
No. Unfortunately, Outlook does not let you hide off-hours from your calendar. Anyone with your calendar access can see your non-working hours.
Can you customize your work hours in the Outlook calendar?
Yes, you can modify Outlook’s business hours from the Calendar menu. But the Outlook application does not support irregular work schedules.
Conclusion
To wrap up, you can fill your spare time using the Block Time tool of the New Appointment function. You can easily make a new appointment and name it “Out of Office” using the Show As drop-down menu. And everyone with your calendar access can see your schedule after saving.
After reading this post, you now know how to restrict time in the Outlook calendar quickly. If you have any difficulties with the steps, let me know in the comment.
Peace!!
