How to add Holidays to Outlook Calendar

Want to know when your favorite holiday is landing on the calendar this year?  Check your Outlook Calendar. The most recent version of Outlook makes it possible to add Holidays and other important affairs dates into your calendar. All version of Outlook, old or new includes holidays for many countries and religions that you can add.

Here is a tutorial to add or delete a holiday calendar in Microsoft Outlook. A Holiday Calendar highlights the popular holidays and events worldwide. It helps you actively plan for your vacations, outings, important events, parties, and more. Also, with a holiday calendar, you can make sure that you don’t miss out on important events and festivals. Now, if you want to create an automatic holiday calendar in Outlook, how to do that? In this article, we are going to discuss the same. You can add holidays and create a holiday calendar in Microsoft Outlook.

How to add Holidays to Outlook Calendar

In Outlook, there are no holidays mentioned in the calendar by default. However, you can manually add holidays for one or more countries. Here are the steps to add holidays to the calendar in MS Outlook”

1. Launch Microsoft Outlook.
2. Now, go to the File menu and click Options.
3. Go to the Calendar tab and click the Add Holidays option.
4. Enable the checkbox for the countries you want to add holidays.
5. Press the OK button to add holidays of selected countries.
6. Save or print the created holiday calendar.

Let us discuss these steps in detail now!

To start, launch your Outlook app and click the File tab.

Then, click ‘Options’ in the menu list of the Account Information screen.

Thereafter, when the Outlook Options dialog box appears, select ‘Calendar from the menu list.

In the Calendar options section, choose ‘Add Holidays’.

Instantly, the ‘Add Holidays to Calendar’ dialog box should appear on your computer screen. When it does appear, check the options for the countries and/or religions whose holidays you want to add to your calendar. Click OK.

A progress dialog box is displayed for a very brief period which after display disappears. When the Holidays for the selected region (country) is finished, a confirmation message is displayed. The time may vary depending on how many countries you have selected. When you see the confirmation box, click OK to close it.

Later, when redirected to the Outlook Options dialog box, click OK to close it. Hover the mouse cursor over the Calendar icon on the Navigation bar at the bottom of the pane. The current month with any upcoming holidays is displayed. The holidays are displayed as shown in the picture below.

You can now click on the holidays and plan any activity or event you want. Furthermore, you can add a reminder for a holiday event, apply a specific color to highlight it, add tags, etc.

Read: How to Change the Background Color of the Calendar in Outlook

When you are done customizing the holiday calendar, you can save it. For that, go to the File menu and click on the Save Calendar option. This option will let you save the holiday calendar in iCalendar (.ics) format.

You can also directly print the created holiday calendar using the File > Print option. Or, create a PDF document of the holiday calendar using the same Print option.

Note: When you upgrade to a newer version of Outlook you can use Add Holidays to update your calendar with the new holiday list. If you wish, you can use a Category view and delete the events in the Holiday category before using Add Holidays. Not essential, but useful in eliminating possible duplicates of older holidays. Now National Holidays for the countries you checked will be shown in your Outlook Calendar!

You may receive a warning that the holidays are already installed. However, you can ignore this warning (and click Yes) if you are installing the holidays in an upgraded version of Outlook and don’t have holidays for “this year” in your calendar.

That’s how you can add Holidays to Outlook Calendar.

Now, if you want to delete some holidays from the calendar in the Outlook application, you can do that too. Let us find out how!

How to delete Holidays from the Calendar in Outlook

You can follow the below steps to remove the holidays that you don’t want to see in the calendar in Outlook:

1. Launch Outlook.
2. Open Calendar and go to the View tab.
3. Click on the Change View > List option.
4. Choose Categories in the Arrangement group.
5. Scroll down to the Holidays category.
6. Select the holidays you want to remove.
7. Press the Home > Delete option.
8. Return to a normal calendar view to view the calendar without holidays.

Let us elaborate on the above steps now!

Launch Outlook and open the holiday calendar. Now, navigate to the View tab and then click on the Change View drop-down option. Then, select the List option.

Next, click on Arrangement Options and then select Categories. Then, check the list of events in the Holiday category.

After that, select one or multiple holidays that you want to remove from your holiday calendar. Right-click on the selected holidays and from the context menu, tap on the Delete option to remove them from your holiday calendar.

You can now return to the normal calendar view by going to the View tab and clicking the Change View > Calendar option. In the Calendar view, you won’t see the deleted holidays in the calendar now.

That’s it! I hope this article helps you add holidays to the calendar automatically and create a holiday calendar in Outlook. You can also delete some holidays that are not significant to you personally or professionally.

This post will show you how to add National Holidays to the Windows Calendar app.