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Outlook 2000: Dates are wrong when you publish the calendar to the web.
Outlook offers a cool feature which allows users to publish the calendar as a web page. Select your calendar folder and choose File, Save as Web page menu to open the Web page wizard which creates an HTML page of your calendar, suitable for use on a local drive or an Internet server.

Unfortunately, Outlook 2000 doesn't know what day of the week future dates fall on. Beginning January 1, 2005, all dates in the calendars published to the web are a day early and Microsoft is aware of the issue and investigating, however I'm not expecting a hotfix for the problem because Outlook 2000 is no longer supported.

Note: The list of appointment details in the right frame is unaffected by this bug. The day of the week is correct in that frame.

Newer versions of Outlook are not affected and if upgrading is not possible, you'll need to use one of the workarounds listed below: changing the HTML header to begin the week on Monday or use a Word template that pulls calendar data from Outlook then save it as an HTML file. The calendar templates are generally better for printing calendars and allow customizations such as pictures and coloring dates and make nice web calendars.

Note: You'll need to set Words macro security to Medium (Tools, Macro, Security) before opening the template and allow the macros to run in order to use any of the templates.   

Workarounds

 This workaround is from John Alferes:

In regards to "Outlook 2000: Dates are wrong when you publish the calendar to the web.", I rewrite calendar day file to start with Monday. FYI

Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set aFile = fso.CreateTextFile(strTarget & "\monthhd.htm", True)
aFile.WriteLine("</script></head><body bgcolor='#669999'><table dir=ltr border=0 cellspacing=0 width=100% height=100% class=MonthDayHdr><tr><td align=center width=14%>Monday</td><td align=center width=14%>Tuesday</td><td align=center width=14%>Wednesday</td><td align=center width=14%>Thursday</td><td align=center width=14%>Friday</td><td align=center width=14%>Saturday</td><td align=center width=14%>Sunday</td><td><img src='gap.gif' width=10px height=20px border=0></td></tr></table></body></html> ")
aFile.Close
Set fso = Nothing
Set aFile = Nothing

John's suggestion gave me another idea - either a batch file to replace the file (monthhd.htm) that sets the dates in the calendar header or replacing the file yourself, after publishing. You can download a copy of the monthhd.htm - remove the ".txt" from the file extension and use it to replace the one Outlook 2000 creates.

Another reader made this suggestion: After making a corrected copy of the monthhd.htm file using either the script or by editing the file in notepad and placing it in the folder with the newly published calendar, mark it as read only. Outlook won't overwrite it the next time you publish a calendar.

The web page will look like this, with the week beginning on Monday. The list of Daily appointments is not affected by the bug.

 

Tools
My Outlook Calendar   Customizable Word template for generating Outlook weekly and monthly calendars. Print any Outlook calendar that you have access to, including calendars from other users' mailboxes and Public Folders. Add color coding by category or by type of item (one-day event, multiple-day event, etc.) Specify time and date formats and the title for the calendar. Slower than the Microsoft template (below), but it does much more and follows progress in the status bar. Office 97/Outlook 98 version available.
Outcal   Enhanced Word template for printing, viewing and web publishing monthly calendars from Outlook data. Based on the Microsoft template. Includes category-based color-coding, better performance.
Outlook Calendar Template   Use the Outlook Calendar Template for Word, then File | Save as HTML. Since the function that builds the calendar from your Outlook appointments is all in VBA, you can potentially customize it to create exactly the type of calendar you want. (HINT: Look at the Insertappointment subroutine.) See More on the Outlook Calendar Template.

More Information
  • The days of the week are not correct when you save your calendar as a Web page in Outlook 2000
    • Published Jan 1, 2005 - Updated Apr 09 2008

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