Microsoft Outlook Holiday Issues

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Microsoft Outlook Holiday Issues

Outlook 2003's holiday list included dates through 2007. To add holidays between 2008 and 2012, Outlook 2003 users need to download the holiday update file described in KB 924423 then install the Holiday file using Tools, Options, Calendar options, Holidays.

For more information and links to updated holiday lists for older versions of Outlook, see Missing Holidays on our Outlook-Tips website.

Microsoft Outlook has a built-in feature to add holidays from different countries and religions to your default Calendar folder. You can add holidays to your Calendar folder by following these steps:

Choose Tools | Options, then click Calendar Options.
On the Calendar Options dialog box, click Add Holidays.
In the Add Holidays to Calendar dialog box, check the countries or religions whose holidays you want to add, then click OK.

For Outlook 2000 and earlier versions, the list of holidays is stored in a text file named Outlook.txt, found in the language specific subfolders of the Office folder. Starting with Outlook 2002, the file is named Outlook.hol. If you are setting up a company-wide deployment of Outlook, you may want to edit this file in Notepad to add your own holidays, remove lists that you don't want users to import, or correct dates that Microsoft got wrong.

Unfortunately, this technique for importing Outlook.txt and Outlook.hol files has many limitations:

Microsoft sometimes gets the dates wrong. See Known Errors.

It doesn't create recurring items for holidays that occur on the same date every year. Instead, the user gets a single one-time event for each imported holiday.

Each version of Outlook has had its own holiday list. Outlook 97 shipped with holidays through 2006. The free download version of Outlook 98 list included holidays only through 2001, while the version distributed with Microsoft Exchange Server used the Outlook 97 list. Outlook 2000 shipped with holidays through 2002, but you can get an updated Outlook.txt file from Microsoft for holidays from 2003 through 2007. The Outlook.hol file for Outlook 2002 includes holidays through 2005.

You can add holidays only to your default Calendar folder, not to a public folder.

Outlook does not check to see whether you have already added holidays for a particular country or religion. This means that you may wind up with multiple copies of some holidays. See Removing Duplicate Holidays.

Below you'll find suggested workarounds for these and other holiday-related issues.

Additional Holiday Lists

If you have Outlook 2003 or an earlier version, you'll need to import new holidays for 2008 and later years. You can either get a replacement for the Outlook.txt/Outlook.hol file or import from various additional sources of dates.

Updated Outlook.txt/Outlook.hol files:

Missing Holidays -- has holidays for 2007 - 2012, for all versions of Outlook.

Feiertage bis zum Jahre 2005 -- Ägypten through Volksrepublik China, 1997-2005/6; country names and some holiday names in German.

For other sources of dates you can add to Outlook, see Calendar Tools for Microsoft Outlook - Dates.

Distributing Company Holidays

The Transmit Holidays Form is a custom Outlook form that creates a special mail message containing appointment details from a folder that you specify. When the user receives the message, they can click a button to add all the appointments -- holidays, company meetings, etc. -- to their Calendar folder.

Another method, if you have all Outlook 2002 users, is to construct an iCalendar file containing multiple appointments. This technique can handle both recurring and nonrecurring items. See Adding Holidays to the Outlook Calendar for details.

Importing to Public Folder

You cannot add holidays directly to a public folder. Instead, add them to your default Calendar folder either by using the Add Holidays method or by importing from a file with the Import and Export Wizard. Then, move or copy the new holiday items to your public folder. The article To remove duplicate holidays from the Calendar folder in Microsoft Outlook describes how to distinguish the newly added items.

Removing Duplicate Holidays

To remove duplicate holidays from the Calendar folder in Microsoft Outlook

While you can easily remove duplicated holidays without the use of a 3rd party tool, the following tools can be helpful if you have additional duplicated calendar items.

Duplicate Removal Tools are listed at Duplicate Remover Tools for Outlook's Calendar