Highlight Today in Calendar
When I use the monthly calendar view in Outlook, I have trouble determining which day is today.
How can I make it strike more?
While Outlook already highlights Today in the Monthly Calendar, I have to admit; I have trouble seeing it as well. This is probably due to the fact that I’m color blind and a lot of color coding in Outlook is done via tinted colors, shades or glares (or whatever you like to call it).
Differences in highlighting throughout the Outlook versions
While Outlook 2007 improved a bit on this to also place a colored border around today’s date, Outlook 2003 only shows a yellow/orange/red shaded header on today’s date while Outlook 2002/XP and previous don’t show any highlighting at all. In Outlook 2010, the highlighting has changed again and now also shades the entire day that is “Today”.
Change calendar background color to increase the contrast
My personal solution to make the highlighting strike a bit more in Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010 is to use a background color that works a bit better for you to see the highlighting. To change the background color of your calendar go to;
- Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007
Tools-> Options…-> button Calendar Options… - Outlook 2010
File-> Options-> section Calendar-> option group; Default calendar color
(or; set it via the Color option on the View tab when your calendar is selected)
In Outlook 2010, the second color in the second line works best for me which corresponds with the 5th color from the top in Outlook 2007. In Outlook 2003 it is the 6th color that does the trick. Play around with it until you have found your best color.
Multiple Calendars
When you are using multiple Calendars, you might want to enable the option “Use selected color on all calendars” as well. Otherwise Outlook will select a different color for each Calendar that you open side-by-side or uses its internal default (the first color in the dropdown list) when you look at a different calendar than your default.
Jump to Today
Sadly, in Outlook 2002/XP and previous, the background color solution will not work as Outlook will not apply calendar backgrounds to the Monthly Calendar. A thing that might help (and also works for Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007) is to press the Today button on the Toolbar or use your localized ALT+key shortcut (by default ALT+o for the English version of Outlook). This will make the selection color “jump” to today’s date which you probably will notice and can recognize where it is located in the Calendar.
Do you think they finally got it right in Outlook 2010?
