Showing Outlook 2007 Calendar Appointments in Different Colors for Different Statuses

In Outlook 2003's calendar, appointments and meetings marked as "Free", "Tentative", "Busy", and "Out of Office" all automatically appeared differently on the calendar view to make it easy to visually distinguish them. Outlook 2007 offers the same "Show time as" options, but does not automatically visually distinguish these statuses by default.

I wanted this feature back in Outlook 2007, because I use my calendar not only to block out time for meeting and appointments which I mark as "Busy", but also as reminders for things I'd like to do if convenenient, which I mark as "Free". Items I mark as "Free" are things like "Read the coporate newsletter", "Drink water", etc.

One way to visually distinguish meetings and appointments in Outlook 2007 is to manually assign each meeting and appointment a category which is associated with a color. This is what I did at first, but thought there must be a better way.

Then I figured out how to get Outlook 2007 to automatically set a different color for each meeting and appointment based on the "Show Time as" status. The steps below work as long as your meetings and appointments don't have a category assigned to them. I went back and removed all of the categories from my meetings and appointments so that this automation would automatically color them.

1. From the "Go" menu, select "Calendar".
2. From the "Edit" menu, select "Automatic Formatting...".
3. In the "Automatic Formatting" window, click "Add".
4. In the "Name" field, type "Free".
5. In the "Color" field, select a color from the pull-down menu.
6. Click "Condition..." button.
7. In the "Filter" window, click "Advanced" tab.
8. Under "Define more criteria:", click "Field" pull-down menu, then select "Frequently-used fields" then "Show Time as".
9. Under "Condition" select "equals".
10. Under "Value" select "Free".
11. Click "Add to List" button.
12. Click "OK" to close the "Filter" window.
13. Click "OK" to close the "Automatic Formatting" window.
14. Check your calendar. Your calendar should now show all "Free" appointments and meetings in the color you chose, except for those appointments and meetings which have a category assigned to them.
15. Repeat above steps for "Tentative", "Busy", and "Out of Office" statuses.