Windows 8.1: The Missing Manual

Mail’s Calendar

Windows 8 comes with a calendar app—but it’s a TileWorld app, and it’s so bare-bones, it makes a skeleton look overdressed.

If you need anything more powerful, you’re in luck; there’s a calendar in Windows Live Mail. Sometimes, its integration with Mail makes sense (like when potential appointments come to you via email), and sometimes not so much (like when you have to fire up Mail just to see what you’re doing on Thursday night).

You can keep the calendar open, in miniature form, in a pane of its own as you work on email; if you don’t see it already, click Calendar on the Ribbon’s View tab.

But to do any more substantial work, you’ll want to fill the screen with the calendar. To do that, click the Calendar button in the lower-left corner of the screen, or press Shift+Ctrl+X. You’ll discover that this calendar offers some nice perks. For example:

• Your Mail calendar is synced with your Windows Live online calendar. Make a change on the Web calendar and you’ll find it changed on your PC, and vice versa.

  Tip

  The online calendar has even more features—including a to-do list.

• You can “subscribe” to calendars on the Internet, like the ones published by your family members/classmates/baseball team members/downtrodden employees. For example, you can subscribe to your spouse’s Google Calendar, thereby finding out if you’ve been committed to after-dinner drinks on the night the big game is on TV.

Working with Views

When you open Mail’s calendar, you see something like Figure 16-17 ...