Smart Date Logic in Microsoft Outlook

You’re sitting at your desk setting up an appointment in Outlook. You want to set up a meeting two weeks after Christmas to kick-off the new year right but you are not sure of the date. Well, Outlook can help you with that.

Microsoft Outlook has what is referred to as Smart Date Logic. I know what you’re thinking… Wow, fancy words, but what does that really mean to you? It means you could enter the following entries in the cleared start date field and Outlook with update appropriately.

Try these entries:

Two weeks before Christmas

3 weeks before 1/1/2009

3rd Tuesday in August

40 days before December 25th

In this example I entered two weeks after Christmas:

The result after pressing enter was:

Once you press the enter key or move to the next field, Outlook will automatically update the start date field with the date.

You can use the same approach for the end time.

You can use entries like:

Two weeks after

30 days after

1 month after

The system will update the field with the proper information. The Smart Date Logic works with Outlook 2003 and 2007.