About appointments, meetings, and events

Appointments are activities that you schedule in your calendar that do not involve inviting other people or reserving resources. You can set reminders for your appointments. You can also specify how your calendar looks to others by designating the time an appointment takes as busy, free, tentative, or out of office. You can schedule recurring appointments. You can view your appointments by day, week, or month.

You can schedule an appointment in your own calendar, and others can give you permission to schedule or make changes to appointments in their calendars. Appointments can also be made private.

A meeting is an appointment you invite people to or reserve resources for. You can create and send meeting requests and reserve resources for face-to-face meetings or for online meetings. When you create a meeting, you identify the people to invite and the resources to reserve, and you pick a meeting time. Responses to your meeting request appear in your Inbox. You can also add people to an existing meeting or reschedule a meeting. You can also add people to an existing meeting or reschedule a meeting.

An event is an activity that lasts 24 hours or longer. Examples of an event include a trade show, the Olympics, a vacation, or a seminar. Usually, an event occurs once and can last for one day or several days, but an annual event, such as a birthday or anniversary, occurs yearly on a specific date. Events and annual events do not occupy blocks of time in your calendar; instead, they appear in banners. An all-day appointment displays time as busy when viewed by others, while an event or annual event displays time as free.