If you're lucky enough to have Outlook 2002, you have some cool new features, like color labels for your calendar items. With labels, you can choose from 10 different colors to highlight the entries while in the Day/Week/month calendar view. Each color label includes a category, such as green for Personal and blue for Business. While you can't add more colors or change the colors used, you can change the category names associated with each color. Right click on one of your appointments and select the Label menu, then Edit.

If you're new to Outlook 2002 and want to begin using labels with your existing appointments, you can use automatic formatting to quickly apply a label to multiple items, based on almost any condition. Simply go to Views | Current View | Customize Current View and choose Automatic Formatting. Select the label and the conditions you want to use.

Another feature new to Outlook 2002 is the ability to view a group schedule containing other users' free and busy information, like you'll find on the Schedule tab of a Meeting Request. Using the group schedule (Actions | Group Schedule), you can create as many different groups as you need and view their free/busy information with one click. If you're stuck with an older version of Outlook or want a more informative group calendar, you'll find a long list of calendaring utilities at Sliptick.com at (http://www.slipstick.com/calendar/scheduleall.htm).

Now for some old tricks for all Outlooks users. While only Outlook 2002 has labels for color coding items in a typical calendar view, you can use automatic formatting to color items in the table view, just like you can color email headers.

If you need to quickly mark or unmark many appointments Private, you might think you have to open each item, one at a time and check the Private box. That's a lot of work if you have many appointments, but there is an easier way: choose the By Category view (or create a new view that groups by a field you choose) then add the Private field to the group by box and drag items between the Yes and No groups. You'll need at least one item marked Yes (or No) to give you a group for each.

Grouping and dragging to change your data works with any field that is groupable and comes in handy in both the calendar and contacts. Grouping by additional fields is easy-right click on the row of field names and choose Group By Box, then drag the field to the box. If the field is not visible, right click again and choose Field Chooser then locate and drag the field name to the group by box. Outlook will let you know if it's a field that you can't group by.

You can avoid opening forms when you need to change other fields by using a table view and enabling in-cell editing. Turn in-cell editing on by right clicking on the row of field names and choosing Customize View. This allows you to click (or tab) and type in most fields, although there are a few fields, such as created or received times, which are not editable.