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Business groups must often meet deadlines set by the company's finance department for the month-end close process. As an operations professional, you have to make sure that your team is aware of these deadlines. Typically, this means writing the dates on a calendar and distributing copies to team members or sending e-mail reminders well in advance.

The Outlook calendar can automatically highlight your key dates

A better way is to customize the Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 holiday file (Outlook.hol) with your important business dates. You can distribute the customized file to your team and be confident that everyone is working from the same calendar.

 Note   Don't be confused by the name of the file. You can use the Outlook.hol file and the Holiday functions to add any important dates to your calendar.

Customize the Outlook holiday file

1. Quit Outlook if it is running.
2. In Microsoft Windows® Explorer, locate the following file and make a backup copy:
   
   drive:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office 11\1033\outlook.hol file
   
3. Open the Outlook.hol file in a text editor, such as Notepad.
4. Press CTRL+END to position the insertion point at the end of the file.
5. Type a new header in the following format:

   [Country or Description] ###
   Event description, yyyy/mm/dd
   Event description, yyyy/mm/dd

   In this format, ### is the total number of items listed for a particular description. Be sure to include a space between the closing bracket and the number and a carriage return at the end of the line. Below this are the individual finance deadlines. Note that on each line, there is a comma and space between the description and the date, and a carriage return at the end of the line. For example:

   [Finance Events] 3
   January Month End Close, 2004/1/26
   February Month End Close, 2004/2/23
   March Month End Close, 2004/3/24

6. Save and close Outlook.hol.

Distribute the customized holiday file

After you have customized Outlook.hol to include your company's important financial dates, you can distribute the file to others so that they can use it to add those dates to their calendars. To distribute the file:

• Send an e-mail message with the customized holiday file attached.

— Or —

• Place the file in a commonly accessible location or shared drive on your network where other people can copy it.

 Note   Recipients of your customized Outlook.hol file will need to copy and paste the file to their local drive: drive: \Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office 11\1033\outlook.hol file.

Add the new dates to the calendar

When the updated Outlook.hol file is available, team members need to update Outlook to use the new information.

1. Open Outlook.
2. On the Tools menu, click Options.
3. In the Options dialog box, on the Preferences tab, click Calendar Options.
4. Under Calendar options, click Add Holidays.

    Note   Even though you aren't adding any new holidays, you still will use the Add Holidays function.

5. Clear the check box next to United States. Check the box next to the heading Finance Events (or whatever description you used), and then click OK.

Set reminders for existing events

1. In the calendar, select the month in which you want to set the reminder and open the event.
2. To turn a reminder on or off, select or clear the Reminder check box.
3. If you select the check box, enter the amount of time before the event that you want the reminder to occur. In the preceding example, the month-end close for January has been set for the 26th. Depending on how your group works, it may be necessary to set a reminder to two or three days prior to allow enough time to prepare. You can set reminders for each month an event, such as month-end close, occurs.
4. To customize the reminder sound for this appointment or meeting only, click , and then select the sound that you want to be played.