Create a downloadable iCalendar

You can create a calendar that contains holidays and important dates, and then save it as an iCalendar file that you can email from Outlook, or offer as a download from your site.

The good thing about an iCalendar file is that it uses a standard Internet format, which means that people can open it in Outlook and many other calendar apps, such as Google Calendar and Apple iCal.

To begin, let’s save some time by copying the holidays from our personal calendar, instaed of creating all the content from scratch.

Go to the VIEW tab, click Change View, and List.

And make sure Categories is selected in the Arrangement group.

All the content we want to use is contained in the Holiday category, so all we have to do is right-click the Categories heading and click Copy.

Go to the folder list. Right-click your personal calendar and click New Calendar. Type a name for it and click OK. Select the new calendar in the folder list and press Ctrl+V to paste the holidays.

Now the only thing left to do is save the new calendar as an iCalendar file.

With the calendar selected, click the FILE tab and Save Calendar.

Choose where to save the file and give it a name.

Under the Save as type box, you can see some information about the file you are about to create: the Name, Whole calendar (meaning the file will contain every holiday in your calendar), and Full details (meaning that people who open the iCalendar will see every detail in the calendar items.)

To change any of that, click More Options.

First, let’s change the Date Range so the people only see one year's worth of holidays.

Click Specify dates and change the End date to one year from now.

Under Detail, we can limit the amount of information that people can see about our appointments and meetings.

In this case, however, we want people to see all the details.

Click OK and Save. Then, locate the iCalendar file, and copy or upload it to a location where people can download the file, such as a network share or website.

If you want to email the calendar, there is an easy way to do that. Go to the HOME tab and click E-mail Calendar.

Specify what to include in the calendar, and click OK.

The calendar is added to the email and an iCalendar file is attached. Add names on the To line, and click Send.

People who receive the email or download the iCalendar file can then import the file to their calendar app.

For more information about adding holidays to an Outlook calendar, check out the links in the Course Summary.