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Are there public categories in outlook?

I have a public calendar set up on an outsourced exchange server (Exchange 2003), that all employees can see. Unfortunately I can't seem to color-code (categorize) meetings such that any employee that looks at the the calendar (with Outlook 2003) will see the colors.

Is there a way to categorize/color-code the meeting entries in the public calendar so that anyone looking at the calendar will see the colors?

John 88{Q

David Lee

Hi, John.

Outlook 2003 and 2007 handle categories in different ways. There's no way to share the colors between them.

tcengineer

ASKER

Then how would it be accomplished if everyone wasusing Outlook 2003 or everyone was using Outlook 2007?

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

David Lee

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tcengineer

ASKER

Thanks for the thorough answer. I'm not too concerned about enforcing the colors. I doubt my users would care. I assume that the scripting option you talk about would be a group policy or one that required everyone to log into a particular Windows domain in order for that to work?

I am mostly a Unix guy but am "supporting" the Windows environment so deep intimate knowledge is lacking (read: nonexistent).

David Lee

Keep in mind that the colors are only possible in Outlook 2007. The scripting option would be a bit of VBScript that each person would have to run to create the categories and associated colors. It can't be done with group policy and Outlook has to be open for it to work.

tcengineer

ASKER

Sounds like more trouble than it's worth.

Thanks for the insight BDF!

David Lee

You're welcome. Sorry there wasn't a good answer. Let me know if you change your mind. I can provide the script if you do.

tcengineer

ASKER

On the contrary, I thought it was a thorough and articulate description of the mechanism. I am just not familiar enough VB or the distribution mechanism for such a script that I felt it outside my expertise or timeframe.

If the script is available and could easily be "installed" on enduser machines, it would be worth the effort.

John 88{Q

David Lee

John,

Here's a the script for doing this. The list of color values is available here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb208064.aspx
To use this

1. Open Notepad
2. Copy the code and pate it into Notepad
3. Edit the script per the comments I included in it
4. Save the file with a .vbs extension
5. Place the script in a shared location that everyone needing to use it has access to
6. Send those staff who need to use it a link to the script in an Outlook message
7. Staff receive the message and click the link
8. The script runs and adds the categories and colors to Outlook

This will only work in Outlook 2007. Outlook 2003 does not implement categories in the same way 2007 does and has no concept of category/color pairs.

'Edit the list of category names on the next line.  This is a simple comma separated list (no space after the commas).'
Const CATNAMES = "Cat1,Cat2,Cat3,Catx"
'Edit the list of category colors on the next line.  The number of colors has to match the number of names.'
Const CATCOLORS = "20,8,6,4"
Dim olkApp, olkCats, olkCat, arrCats, varCat, arrColors, varColor, intIndex
Set olkApp = GetObject(,"Outlook.Application")
Set olkCats = olkApp.Session.Categories
arrCats = Split(CATNAMES, ",")
arrColors = Split(CATCOLORS, ",")
For intIndex = LBound(arrCats) To UBound(arrCats)
    varCat = arrCats(intIndex)
    varColor = arrColors(intIndex)
    Set olkCat = olkCats.Add(varCat, varColor)
Next
Set olkCat = Nothing
Set olkCats = Nothing
Set olkApp = Nothing
WScript.Quit

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