How to Set Working Hours and Availability in Outlook

Setting your working hours in Outlook tells coworkers and scheduling tools when you're actually available. These hours shade your calendar grid, shape your free/busy status, and guide the Scheduling Assistant when others try to book time with you. This guide shows where to set work hours across Outlook versions and how they affect availability.

Why working hours matter

Outlook uses your defined work hours in several places:

Calendar shading — hours outside your work day appear dimmed.
Scheduling Assistant — when someone proposes a meeting, Outlook highlights times inside your work hours and flags off-hours slots.
Suggested times — Outlook's automatic time suggestions stay within your working day.

Working hours are not the same as free/busy: free/busy reflects your actual events, while working hours describe the window you're generally open for work.

Set work hours in new Outlook and on the web

New Outlook for Windows and Outlook on the web (outlook.office.com or outlook.com) share the same settings.

Select the gear icon to open Settings.
Go to Calendar → Work hours and location.
Toggle on each day you work.
Set the start and end time for each day. You can use different hours on different days.
Changes save automatically.

Set your work location (optional)

The same panel may let you indicate where you work (office or remote) by day. This location can appear to colleagues and help with room and in-person scheduling, depending on your organization's setup. It's optional and separate from your hours.

Set work hours in classic Outlook desktop

Select File → Options → Calendar.
In the Work Time section, set Start time and End time.
Under Work week, check the days you work.
Optionally set the First day of week here too.
Select OK.

Classic Outlook applies the same start/end time to every selected work day; for per-day hours, use new Outlook or the web.

Mobile

The Outlook mobile app generally reflects work hours set on desktop or the web rather than offering full editing. Set your hours on a larger screen, and mobile will honor them for display and scheduling. Some versions let you adjust basic availability under Settings → Calendar, but the complete controls live on desktop and web.

How availability shows to others

When a coworker opens the Scheduling Assistant to invite you:

Times inside your work hours that have no events show as free.
Your existing events show as busy, tentative, out of office, or working elsewhere, based on each event's status.
Off-hours times are visible but visually de-emphasized so people prefer your working window.

You control how much detail others see through sharing and publishing settings—see How to Publish and Share an Outlook Calendar.

Set your status on individual events

Working hours set the backdrop; per-event status fine-tunes it:

Open or create an event.
Find the Show as option.
Choose Free, Busy, Tentative, Out of office, or Working elsewhere.

For example, mark personal blocks as Busy so no one books over them, even though they aren't meetings.

Troubleshooting

Hours look wrong after travel. Check your time zone in Settings; work hours are stored in your set zone.
Changes didn't sync. Confirm you edited the correct account and give web-to-desktop sync a moment.
Some options are locked. Work and school accounts may have availability features managed by an administrator.

With accurate hours set, a unified view of every calendar makes scheduling even easier. nocal brings your Outlook and Google calendars into one timeline — see how.