Calendars have their own quirks so Outlook, part of Microsoft Office, sometimes bears the brunt of the frustration at calendars because it is a calendaring program. One behavior that can be difficult to master are meetings or appointments that recur with the day of the month rather than the date.
From easiest to more difficult to predict, and therefore program, I would arrange recurring meetings this way:
- Having a meeting the third of every month.
- Having a meeting every Friday.
- Having a meeting the last Friday of the month.
- Having a meeting every last weekday of the month.
The last weekday of the month could be any day, Monday through Friday, and a variety of dates based on the month and how the month lands. Fortunately, Outlook can do all of this figuring out for us and we don’t have to settle for guessing with the last Friday of the month or even the fourth Friday of the month.
Create or edit your meeting/appointment and click on the recurrence button in the ribbon. This will bring up the Recurrence window. Choose your time and duration and then select Monthly in the Recurrence pattern.
You can then select ‘last’ and ‘weekday’ from the next option. You can even skip months if you have a regular pattern to your meetings. See the screenshot below from Outlook 2016.
This is a simple option but can seem a little hidden as you actually have to scroll up on the weekday listing to find ‘weekday’. Other options besides actual days of the week include ‘day’, and ‘weekend day’.
These can be great for reminders surrounding timesheets, statistics, or other once-a-month tasks.