In many of our jobs now we are having to organise international diaries, where there are meetings taking place in two different time zones. Many Executive PAs are being requested to manage and organise meetings and meeting rooms that have attendees in different time zones.

This is more common if you are working at a multinational company and you are organising meetings between countries. In this situation, telephone and video conferencing facilities are being used, but all are dependent on the PA’s capability to use Outlook’s advanced diary functions

However, this is an administrative headache without the correct Microsoft Outlook function. Due to your meetings occurring at different times in their relative time zones, it is essential that you are clear on how to book meetings in different time zones. If you do not use this function, you run the risk of key attendees misinterpreting the time of the meeting and not attending.

Therefore, you can use Outlook to book meetings in different time zones. This will enable you to control meetings in two time zones without causing any doubts over the timing of the meeting. Therefore, for example, we could have a meeting at 12:00 GMT and 09:00 Buenos Aires Time.

Meetings and Timezones

When you go to create a ‘New Appointment’ you select ‘Calendar’.

Then go to the Home Tab and select a New Appointment.

In the Appointment Tab, there is an ‘Options group’ that has options for Time Zones.

If you are scheduling a meeting that will take place in a certain time zone, you will then have the option to select the relevant time zone.

Organising an Outlook calendar to be in two time zones

If you are managing two time zones in the office, it could prove useful to organise your calendar with two time zones. This is possible to show in a calendar in a side by side view.

  • Go to File
  • Options
  • Calendar
  • Scroll the Calendar settings options until the heading Time zones
  • Select a second-time zone

Now you will be able to see the second time zone alongside the other in order to make it easier to manage any managers that are travelling between time zones.

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