Do we have any Outlook experts?

Asked by CWOTUS (26102

) November 9th, 2012

I’m new to Microsoft Outlook, and generally enjoying the learning process there. I especially like the rules that can be set up to categorize, flag, sort, copy, forward and otherwise manage email messages. But what I’d like to learn how to do is apply certain rules to my Calendar, too, and I don’t see that as an option yet.

What I want to do in particular is create a rule that will automatically forward any “meeting” or “appointment” to my Gmail calendar, too, so that:
1. I won’t miss morning meetings that are set for earlier than my normal arrival time, and
2. I won’t decide to take an impromptu day off and not be aware of a meeting or appointment that I have scheduled for that day (whether at work or elsewhere) and that isn’t already in my Gmail calendar.

I don’t want to have to use my work laptop at home and sign in to the Exchange server here every night (which is another way to accomplish what I want, after all). I want to automate the Outlook meeting requests to duplicate on my personal calendar outside of the work environment. It doesn’t seem like that should be so difficult.

Does anyone have any good ideas for that? I specifically do not want to attempt a manual duplication, cut-and-paste or forward of every meeting to my Gmail account.

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4 Answers

There are a couple things that can make or break this.
If your primary account you reference that gets the invites is a Corporate Exchange Server, then the rule will have to be Client side based. This means that you will have to have Outlook launched and running and when the invite lands in Outlook, the forward can get acted on. The reason for this having to be Client side rule is that most Corporate organizations are not going to allow you to add a personal gmail contact to Active Directory and have it show up in the Global Address List. Autoforwarding emails at an Exchange Server Side to an address outside the company would be a huge faux pas.

Simply create a local contact in Outlook with the needed information of gmail account and autoforward based on the following rule creation:
To create the rule in Outlook:
1.Click Tools –> Rules and Alerts –> New Rule
2.Choose “Check Messages When They Arrive”
3.Check the box “which is a meeting invitation or update”
4.Click Next
5.Select “forward it to the contact for your gmail as an attachment”

Hope that helps. Just know that with Exchange 2010 and forward, there are security roles and policies that can be established to block the flow of mail for these kinds of issues. Corporations like to keep the information pertaining to the corporation on corporation controlled systems.

blueiiznh (16698

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