Find seven calendars side by side and most of them empty less than useful? Find out here how to overlay calendars in Outlook (both Windows and Mac) atop each other (and still break out individual calendars where it suits you).
First, “I’d Like to Thank the Mushrooms”
“I’d like to thank the mushrooms,” said a U.S. composer live on Italian TV in February 1959, “and all the people of Italy!”
What had happened?
Composer John Cage had just answered the final question about his chosen subject, mycology,—“What are the 24 names of the white spored Agaricus contained in Atkinson’s Studies of American Fungi?”—with admirable precision, rattling off the names in alphabetical order.
He won enough money to buy a new tour bus for his friend Merce Cunningham‘s namesake Dance Company.
Now, with tour dates to fill in, how about seeing them all on one calendar instead of having them rattled off side by side?
How to Overlay Calendars in Outlook for Windows
Time needed: 3 minutes
To see multiple calendars overlaid on each other on a single sheet in Outlook for Office 365 for Windows:
- Enter Day, Work Week, Week or Month view in Outlook calendar.
No Schedule View: Schedule View always shows events from a calendar as a list
- Click with the right mouse button on the calendar you want to see in overlay mode in the folder pane.
No folder pane: If you do not see the folder pane, click the Click to expand Folder Pane button.
- Select Overlay from the menu that has appeared, so it is selected.
As an alternative to the context menu, you can also use a shortcut in the calendar display:
- Click the View in Overlay Mode arrow (⬅︎) for the calendar you want to add to overlay view.
Default: The leftmost calendar is always the main calendar; Outlook adds others to it as overlays.
See Calendars Side by Side
To exclude a calendar from overlay view and give it its own sheet:
- Select Overlay from the calendar’s context menu in the folder pane (see above) or
- click the View in Side-by-Side Mode arrow (➜) in the calendar’s header.
Overlay Calendars in New Outlook and Outlook on the Web
New Outlook and Outlook on the Web show all select calendars in one overlaid view by default.
To see calendars in overlay mode in New Outlook:
- Go to Calendar in Outlook.
Keyboard shortcut: You can switch to calendars with Ctrl 2 on Windows. - Check all calendars you want to see in overlay mode in the calendar pane.
- Turn off Split view.
Here’s how: Go to the Home or View tab on the ribbon and click Split view.
How to Overlay Calendars in Outlook for Mac
Outlook for Mac always displays calendars in overlay mode when it shows four or more at a time. For two or three calendars, you can choose side by side or overlay view.
New Outlook for Mac
To switch between overlay mode and seeing calendars side by side in new Outlook for Mac:
- Select View | Overlay from the menu.
Outlook for Mac 16
To toggle calendar view in Outlook for Mac if two or three calendars are visible:
- Go to the Organize tab in Outlook for Mac calendar view.
- Click Overlay.
(How to overlay calendars or see them side by side tested with Outlook for Windows for Microsoft 365 Version 2403 and Outlook for Mac 16.41; updated April 2024)