How to show your working hours to your colleagues in Outlook

Microsoft Outlook is packed with several features, making it the standard email and calendar platform for millions of users. It has been designed to help users manage their work time more effectively. But when multiple users are collaborating, how do they make sure they are not receiving meeting requests outside their working hours? By displaying their working hours in Outlook! Today we’ll look at the method that allows you to display your working hours to your colleagues in Outlook.

Show working hours in Outlook

The Scheduling Assistant shows you suggested meeting times based on the availability of your colleagues on the date and time you select. So, when you create a meeting request in Outlook, the Scheduling Assistant will try to find a time slot where you and your colleagues are both free.

The Scheduling Assistant, however, only displays the hours from 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. By default, the work week is set from Monday through Friday, with a work day extending from 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. The first day of the week in the Calendar is Sunday.

You can change these working hours to whatever suits you. For this,

Click File> Options > Calendar and search for the ‘Work Time’ section. Change the working hours as per your requirement.

Here, we have to change it, from 8 am to 2 pm.

If we open a new meeting request and click on the Scheduling Assistant, our working hours will update to reflect the new values. Outlook will also display these hours to any colleagues who have access to your calendar, so they can see your available times when arranging meetings with you.

There should be an overlap with your colleague’s working timings. Even if it’s not, you can always create a meeting request and add a colleague.

Outlook will display your working hours to other users. If any of your working times do not overlap with the other person’s working times, it will be shown as a light gray bar, which means ‘outside working hours.’

Try and find common ground with your colleagues in regard to working hours. This will help to reduce time wasted trying to communicate with team members and trying to arrange meeting times.