Outlook trick for picking a conference room for a meeting

If you’re like me, when creating a meeting, you hate trying to remember each conference room’s name, selelcting it in Outlook, and then trying to figure out a time and room for the meeting. Most of the time, I’m sure I’m forgetting a room. Of course, if the names of the rooms all started the same (eg, Conference Room – Manhattan), it would be easier.

So, I created a distribution list for conference rooms in my local contacts list. Just click on New->Distribution list, and then add each conference room to the list. This will be the only time that you have to remember and find each conference room’s name. From here on out, you can just use the list.

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Then, I create the appointment, and add this list as a resource. Of course, you can add any other attendees to your meeting as well, unless you just want to sit in the conference room alone.

Then, I click the [+] icon next to the list to expand it. All of the individual rooms shows up. There is some lag as Outlook has to get the schedule for each room so it can display availability, but it seems to work pretty well.

I hope that helps you get less frustrated when using Outlook. Please let me know if you have any other tips/suggestions in the comments below.