By default, no holidays are added to your calendar when you begin using Microsoft Office Outlook.

 Note   If you are using Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 and want holidays for years 2008 through 2012, see Microsoft Knowledge Base article 924423.

• More information about holidays and events

• Add holidays and events

• Delete holidays and events

• Create custom holiday and event files

• Distribute custom holiday and event files

More information about holidays and events

Holidays are all-day events.

You can also create custom holiday files for other types of nonholiday events, such as quarterly deadlines or your organization's paydays.

Add holidays and events

1. On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click Calendar Options.
2. Under Calendar options, click Add Holidays.

   

3. Select the check box next to each country/region whose holidays you want to add to your calendar, and then click OK.

    Note   Your own country/region is automatically selected.

   If you already added a country's or region's holidays to your calendar, the check box for that country/region is selected in the Add Holidays to Calendar dialog box. If you try to add the same items again, you receive the following message:

   Holidays for country/region are already installed. Do you want to install them again?

   If you click Yes, the holidays and events are installed a second time, and you see duplicate holiday and event entries.

 Note   The holiday information that is provided with Outlook includes items during calendar years 2006 through 2012. If you are using a non-Gregorian calendar, items that occur during the same time period are included.

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Delete holidays and events

You can also use the following steps to delete any duplicate holidays that were added while you were adding holidays to your calendar.

1. In Calendar, on the View menu, point to Current View, and then click Events.
2. Select the holidays that you want to delete. To select multiple rows, press the CTRL key, and then click other rows.

 Tip   Click the Calendar icon to select a row. Do not click in the data cells of the row.

3. Click Delete on the Standard toolbar.

 Tip   To quickly delete all of the holidays for a country/region, click the Location column heading to sort the list of events so that it displays all of the holidays for a country/region together.

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Create custom holiday and event files

Outlook comes with predefined holidays. However, what if you want everyone on your team to display company holidays and events, such as corporate paydays and quarterly expense due dates, in their calendars? You can create your own custom holiday set and distribute it to other people on your team.

 Tip   Instead of creating custom holiday files, consider creating and sharing custom calendars. Find links to more information about sharing calendar information in the See also section.

 Warning   Modify the Outlook.hol file at your own risk. Microsoft provides this procedure "as is" without warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose.

 Note   If you add the same custom set of holidays again, you will get a duplicate set of the holidays in your calendar. Therefore, you should create a custom holiday set rather than customizing an existing set.

1. Exit Outlook if it is running.
2. In Microsoft Windows Explorer, locate the following file:
   drive:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office 12\LCID\outlook.hol

    Note   LCID is your locale identification (LCID) number. For more information about LCID numbers, see the See Also section.

3. Make a backup copy of the file.
4. Using a text editor, such as Microsoft Notepad, open the Outlook.hol file.
5. Press CTRL+END to position the insertion point at the end of the file.
6. Type a new header and custom events by using the format described below.

   [Country or Description] ###

   
   

   Holiday or event description, yyyy/mm/dd

   
   

   Holiday or event description, yyyy/mm/dd

   In the above format,

   ###

   is the total number of items listed for a particular country/region or description. There is a space between the closing bracket and the number, as well as a carriage return at the end of the line. On each holiday line, there are a comma and a space between the holiday description and the date, as well as a carriage return at the end of the line. For example:

   [Expense Reports] 4
   Q1 Expense Reports Due, 2007/04/15
   Q2 Expense Reports Due, 2007/11/15
   Q3 Expense Reports Due, 2007/12/15
   Q4 Expense Reports Due, 2007/01/15
   

7. Save and close Outlook.hol.

The next time you run Outlook, the new Expense Reports dates are available for adding to your calendar.

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Distribute custom holiday and event files

You can distribute a customized holiday and event file to other people in the following ways:

• Send an e-mail message with the Outlook.hol file attached.
• Place the file in a commonly accessible location or shared drive on your network where other people can copy the file.

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