How to delete old calendar entries in one shot

A few weeks ago, we ran the article "A quick trick for deleting enormous amounts of junk email". In it, we showed how to set up your email so it would be possible to delete thousands (or even hundreds of thousands) of old junk mail messages in one shot.

Responding to this article, Amanda Tapac of Wells Fargo asks:

Saw your article - was wondering if you could advise me how to delete past calendar entries. All of my 2005 calendar entries are still there and taking up space.

Sure, Amanda. This one's easy. The first thing you're going to need to do is change your calendar view. First, click on your calendar so you're in the calendar view.

Next, you'll need to dig pretty deep in your menus. Under the View menu, select Arrange By->Current View->By Category, as shown in Figure A.

Be sure to check that View->Arrange By->Show in Groups is off. At this point, your calendar should like like our sample, shown in Figure B.

Now, click the start tab at the top of the window, so you're sorting your entries by date. Simply shift-select all the entries you want to delete, hit delete, and you're done.

You might want to consider some tricks:

• If some of those entries are repeating, you might want to deselect those.
• If you delete something you don't want, it'll be in the Deleted Items folder. You can always undelete.
• You could create a separate archive PST file and drag the items you want to delete to the archive PST file, then delete them from your main PST file.

And, finally, don't forget to get your calendar view back by selecting View->Arrange By->Current View->Day/Week/Month.

There ya have it. Big-time calendar deletion in a few short steps.