Dear Joan, Dan, Jocelyn Fiorello, and all other Users of Outlook that are
frustrated by a lack of a reliable Calendar Update application for US
Holidays from Microsoft:
Well Jocelyn, it certainly seems like a poor excuse that "Microsoft is aware
of the problem...". I know you're trying as hard as you can, and you've
provided very good, detailed, information in your 7/30/2005 post concerning
ways to manually update the Outlook Calendar, but there is really no excuse
for a company the size of Microsoft not to provide the millions (yes,
Virginia, there are MILLIONS of Microsoft Office Users out there...) of users
around the world with an up-dated calendar.
I do NOT want to rake you "over the coals"; you've been chastized enough in
the blogs all over the net, including formal web pages (check out
http://www.slipstick.com/calendar/holidays.htm). And the good people at
EarthCalendar.Net, a web site you recommend, only provide dates to 2007.
Perhaps they are underfunded. Most of us would like to update our calendars
until 2010, at the very least.
And then there is the issue of our legal holidays (referred to as "Observed"
by the Federal Government) v. traditional holiday dates. You've NEVER gotten
that function correct. And did anyone notice that Microsoft had Election Day
in 2005 falling on November 1ST??? By law this can NOT happen. It is ALWAYS
the first Tuesday AFTER the first Monday in November, so it can never fall on
November 1st.
Well, using three (3) different web sites, the Feds at
www.opm.gov, a
"secular" calendar site created by the good Marcos Montes at
www.smart.net/mmontes-cgi-bin/ushols.cgi, and a Christian site to calculate
the dates for Easter (The first Sunday following the Full Moon on or after
the Vernal Equinox, set by the Western churches to always be March 21st), I
updated my OUTLOOK.HOL text file found in %root%\Program Files\Microsoft
Office\Office10\1033 using Notepad and updated all the entries from 2006 thru
2010.
Then after saving that file and using the internal Outlook options to add US
Holidays to my calendar as discribed by Jocelyn in her earlier post from
July, all the dates have been correctly added to my calendar.
You may be interested in the Easter Dates. In the format you need to add
them to the OUTLOOK.HOL file under the US Key, they a
Easter Sunday,2006/4/16
Easter Sunday,2007/4/8
Easter Sunday,2008/3/23
Easter Sunday,2009/4/12
Easter Sunday,2010/4/4
Good Luck everyone!
Jon
"Joan" wrote:
This does not address the issue. It is really inconvenient not having public
and religious holidays in my calendar when arranging meetings. It would be
helpful to know when the MS update will be corrected and available for
download.
"Jocelyn Fiorello [MVP - Outlook]" wrote:
I use the Earth Calendar at http://www.earthcalendar.net/index.php to
find just about any holiday on the planet...I realize it doesn't solve
your Outlook calendar holidays issue but at least you don't have to
guess when a particular holiday will be this year or next.
"Jocelyn Fiorello [MVP - Outlook]" wrote:
Microsoft is aware of those errors and is fixing them -- I haven't
tried to find the download but it may be missing again until the
file has been revised.