One issue that I've had as a long-time pro user of RTM is the ability to look at a future date and see my availability. That's because I try to use RTM as a full-fledged planning tool, not just a task manager. I've always thought if I could solve this issue I wouldn't need a calendar. RTM would be my one-stop planner.

For example: I have a scheduled reoccurring meeting in RTM for the 2nd Monday of every month. The event/task doesn't spawn a new copy until the date-time has passed or I mark it complete, so I can't see it far down the road. As a result, I might not recognize that I'm already busy when scheduling a new item.

The obvious answer is to create multiple, individual events, but that can be time consuming. Imagine doing that for multiple daily or weekly events. I thought of a reasonable work-around. I can use the date adding capability of a spreadsheet program to easily create a list of the dates when an event will happen in the future, up to a specific date. The columns look like this:

Event description Start Date @ time tag(s) etc.
Event description 2nd date @ time tag(s) etc.
Event description 3rd date @ time tag(s) etc.
Event description 4th date @ time tag(s) etc.

All of the dates are auto-calculated by the spreadsheet with a formula like =B1+14 where B1 is the cell containing the previous date and 14 is the interval in days, 7 for weekly events, 1 for daily, etc. There are more complicated ways to list dates like the first Monday in each month, but you get the idea.

Once I have a list of all of the times the event repeats for the year, I can paste it (as text only) into an email body. I then use RTM's import email address function to create the series of events in the desired RTM list. The last step is to create a task to renew/extend the list at some interval, like yearly.

If someone has a better way to accomplish the same thing, please let me know.