Q: How do you show multiple time zones in Calendar view in Outlook 2010?

A: When you work with multiple locations across different time zones, sometimes it's helpful to display those time zones concurrently in your calendar. Outlook lets you show a side-by-side hourly scale beside the calendar for easy reference. Having Outlook show two time zones at once can be simpler than having to work out the difference or look it up each time you're considering the equivalent time at the second location. Those of you in Canada are probably familiar with the media saying, when referencing a national program schedule, "one half-hour later in Newfoundland." I'll use Newfoundland as my secondary time zone for this tip.

Outlook 2010 lets you add a second time zone to the calendar view and provide a label for the time zones displayed. The options to add and label time zones are found in File, Options, Calendar. Scroll through the Calendar settings options until you reach the heading Time zones, as Figure 1 shows.

Figure 1: Setting time zone options in Outlook 2010 (click to enlarge)

Outlook by default assumes the time zone of your workstation as the main time zone and doesn't assign a label to it. Below this time zone setting is a check box with the option to Show a second time zone to the view. You can also assign an optional label. Figure 2 shows the two time zones side by side along the left side of the calendar view, labeled as Home and Newfies for the time zone of Newfoundland.

Figure 2: The Calendar view with two time zones displayed (click to enlarge)

The label, if you choose to add one, appears at the top of the column forming the Y-axis in the calendar grid. I can easily see that the time at our (imaginary) office in Come-By-Chance, Newfoundland, is 1:30 p.m. while we have our 9:00 a.m. meeting at the home office location on Wednesday.

As Figure 3 shows, the settings for the secondary time zone feature can be found in the registry at the following location: HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice14.0OutlookOptionsTimeZone.

Figure 3: Registry setting for altering Outlook 2010 time zone settings
(click to enlarge)

If you need users to have this setting pre-configured, you can do so using a .reg file through logon scripts or Group Policy.

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