How to Easily Add Public Holidays to Your Outlook Calendar: A Step-by-Step Guide

Hey there, holiday lovers! It’s your pal Holiday Little Assistant back with another useful tip. Today we’re tackling a question I get all the time: how to get those sweet public holidays automatically showing up in your Outlook calendar. No more manually entering dates or missing important days off – let’s get your calendar holiday-ready!

The Super Simple Method to Add Holidays in Outlook

Good news – Outlook has a built-in holiday feature! Here’s how it works:

1. Open Outlook and click “File” in the top-left corner
2. Select “Options” > “Calendar”
3. Under “Calendar options,” click “Add Holidays”
4. Check the box for your country (and any others you need)
5. Hit “OK” and boom – holidays magically appear!

This method works for Outlook 2013 through Outlook 2021 and Microsoft 365. The pre-loaded holidays include all the major ones – New Year’s Day, Memorial Day, Christmas, you name it.

What If My Country Isn’t Listed?

Sometimes Outlook doesn’t have smaller countries’ holidays. No sweat! You’ve got options:

Option 1: Find an online holiday calendar (like ours!) that offers .ics files for download. Many government tourism sites provide these for free. Just download and import into Outlook.

Option 2: Use third-party tools like “Calendarific” or “Holiday API” that generate holiday files you can sync. Some even let you customize which holidays to include.

Pro tip: Always check the year range on downloaded files – you don’t want holidays stopping after 2023!

Syncing Across Devices

Here’s where things get awesome. When you add holidays through Outlook desktop, they’ll automatically sync to:

• Outlook on your phone (via Exchange or Microsoft account)
• Outlook Web Access (OWA)
• Any other devices logged into the same account

If you’re using the import method, make sure to enable calendar syncing in your account settings. I’ve seen folks panic when holidays only show up on one device – usually it’s just a sync delay.

Bonus: Creating Custom Holiday Reminders

Want personal reminders like “Buy Mom’s Birthday Gift Before Mother’s Day”? Right-click any holiday in your calendar to:

• Set advance alerts (great for travel planning)
• Change the color code (make all holidays show up in festive red!)
• Add notes (“Office closed”, “Bank holiday – no transactions”)

So there you have it – everything you need to never miss another public holiday again. Whether you’re using Outlook for work, personal planning, or just to count down to the next long weekend, keeping holidays visible helps you stay ahead of the game.

Thanks for hanging out with me today! For more holiday tips and updated calendar files, keep our site bookmarked. Got a tricky Outlook holiday situation I didn’t cover? Hit me up – I live for this stuff!