Customizable PIM on your desktop wallpaper

Requirements

- Active Desktop Calendar 5.6 or later
- Microsoft® Outlook® 2000, XP, 2003, 2007

Make it work

Active Desktop Calendar can read appointments and tasks directly from Outlook and show them on the desktop. To enable the option:

• make sure your Outlook is up and running
• right click on Active Desktop Calendar's date icon in the taskbar area next to the system clock and choose Layers
• click on Add Outlook layer button.

You will get all tasks and next seven days of appointments from Outlook's default calendar visible both in Active Desktop Calendar and on the desktop together with other information you might have in Active Desktop Calendar's data layers.

Outlook's data are read-only and kept in a separate layer named "Calendar [OUTLOOK]". You will not be able to relocate, rename and clear data in this special layer. You can only disable it in the list or remove it completely.

Important to know

When you start/reboot your computer and Active Desktop Calendar is started you also have to start Outlook and keep it running for at least a couple of minutes so the connection is established. After that Outlook's data are refreshed automatically on one minute cycles. If you keep mouse pointer over Outlook's layer name in the list for a couple of seconds you will see last successful update date and time information in a tooltip

Side effects

Once Active Desktop Calendar establishes connection with Outlook it will check its data on one minute cycles. Therefore Outlook's engine will remain in computer memory even if you close Outlook itself. This is normal behaviour. As a side effect any .PST files you worked with will remain locked and your reminders will continue to work normally and pop-up in due time. For that reason before you can do anything with .PST files (e.g. backup) you have to exit Active Desktop Calendar first so Outlook's engine is released from computer memory.

Outlook layer options

By default Outlook layer shows one week of appointments, but you can change this to show up to four weeks through Settings – Notes/Tasks Options dialog. Please note however that reading permanently more than one week of appointments may slow down Outlook. Therefore one more option is available on the same dialog and it allows you to switch data refresh interval from default 1 minute to 5 or 15 minutes.

Notes:
- Outlook 97 and Outlook Express (all versions) are not supported
- Outlook layer options are available with version 5.95 or later