Create a custom Outlook holiday file
Like many of my friends, the first thing I check at the start of the year is the list of public holidays for that year. Outlook’s holiday feature comes really handy as it makes it convenient for me to update my Calendar with a predefined list of holidays.
To add a predefined holiday list to your Outlook calendar go to Tools -> Options -> Calendar Options -> Add Holidays and select your country and click OK.
The predefined holiday list is stored in the file Outlook.hol which is called as the Outllook holiday file.
You don’t have to stick to the predefined list as you can edit this file and add your custom holidays using a notepad.
A holiday file has the following format…
[Section Name] [Number of Holidays]
Holiday Description, yyyy/mm/dd
Holiday Description, yyyy/mm/dd
Holiday Description, yyyy/mm/dd
and so on..
You can have as many sections as you want.
So what if you want to create your Company specific holiday list? Suppose there is a fictional company ABC, which has branches in Chennai, Bangalore and US. You can create a custom holiday file for this company which can be distributed to all its employees. To do so…
- Open notepad and paste the following…
[ABC Bangalore Office 2010] 15 Makara Sankranthi ,2010/1/14 Republic Day ,2010/1/26 Maha Shivarathri ,2010/2/12 Ugadi ,2010/3/16 Good Friday ,2010/4/2 May Day ,2010/5/1 Independence Day ,2010/8/15 Janmashtami ,2010/9/1 Id-ul-fitr (Ramzan) ,2010/9/10 Gandhi Jayanti ,2010/10/2 Vijaya Dashami ,2101/10/17 State Formation Day ,2010/11/1 Deepavali ,2010/11/5 Bakrid ,2010/11/17 Christmas ,2010/12/25 [ABC Chennai Office 2010] 13 Pongal ,2010/1/14 Republic Day ,2010/1/26 Maha Shivarathri ,2010/2/12 Good Friday ,2010/4/2 May Day ,2010/5/1 Independence Day ,2010/8/15 Janmashtami ,2010/9/1 Id-ul-fitr (Ramzan) ,2010/9/10 Gandhi Jayanti ,2010/10/2 State Formation Day ,2010/11/1 Deepavali ,2010/11/5 Bakrid ,2010/11/17 Christmas ,2010/12/25 [ABC US Office 2010] 11 Memorial Day ,2010/5/31 Independence Day ,2010/7/5 Labor Day ,2010/9/6 Thanksgiving Holiday ,2010/11/25 Thanksgiving Holiday ,2010/11/26 US Corporate Holiday ,2010/12/20 US Corporate Holiday ,2010/12/21 US Corporate Holiday ,2010/12/22 US Corporate Holiday ,2010/12/23 US Corporate Holiday ,2010/12/24 New Year's Eve ,2010/12/31 - Save this file as ABC 2010 Holidays.hol
To use this file just double click and select the sections you want to add to your Calendar.
This file can be distributed to all the ABC employees through email or a shared location.
Hope you found it useful![tweetmeme style=”compact”]
2LeggedSpider 
Great blog post.. I hope you continue on posting these great posts! I will be subscribing to your rss 🙂
Thanks 🙂
This is a good one Sumit!
Hi
i’ve copied your example into a .hol file, but when i double click on it, it just open in note pad don’t automaticlally update my calender
You have to save it as .HOL file
Is there a way to configure the entries as “out of office/busy/tentative” etc, or to configure the colour flag?
Hey there! Did you get an answer to your question?
I also want to know how do I change the category to show something else than “holiday” and the heading that appers when double clicking on the file.
Thank you
You can’t with a HOL file, but you *can* specify busy status and categories with a CSV file (spreadsheet) as mentioned in Sumit Thomas’s reply of 2012-02-23 and his link. The easiest way of doing this, if you don’t want to create the spreadsheet from scratch, is to create the entries in your calendar exactly as you would like others to see them, then export the calendar as a CSV file for this date range. You will then need to edit the CSV file in Excel (or Notepad, as it is a plain text file) and remove the other appointments (Excel is probably easier, as you can sort on the Category heading). But remember to save it as a CSV.
Note that the CSV file is a lot more laborious for users to import. I have deployed at my workplace, a HOL file containing pay days, financial boundaries, English and company holidays and shut-down days, and it has been imported by hundreds of people – they simply need to click on the Intranet link, and Outlook does the rest. Even then I have had questions. I think the CSV file would be more challenging for a bog-standard user to import.
As it is, whether you deploy a HOL or CSV file, be willing to help users who have questions. If your file contains public holidays, users might confuse the Outlook-provided dates with yours.
One other comment, the date format in the CSV is important. By default the dates are saved according to your regional preferences and will cause problems for users with different ones. However I have found that putting the dates in yyyy-MM-dd format e.g. 2012-03-15, which I use anyway, and the times in HH:mm:ss format e.g. 20:40:59, allows the file to be imported regardless of users’ own settings.
I am not sure if you can do that with a .hol file.
You can refer this link for options to import entries in to your outlook calendar. http://www1.towson.edu/adminfinance/ots/training/documents/Outlook_2003_Importing_Calendar_Data.pdf
This website might provide you more info as well http://www.msoutlook.info/question/572
thanks for this.. exactly what i needed
Thanks, Saved a lot of time for me.
Quite useful, didn’t know such a feature existed.
When we create custom holiday list, is there a way to have some description about of the event/holiday displayed in the message window whenever any user double clicks the event from the To-Do area?
Hello! Do you know if they make any plugins to help with Search Engine Optimization? I’m trying
to get my blog to rank for some targeted keywords but I’m not seeing very good results.
If you know of any please share. Many thanks!
Hello would you mind letting me know which webhost you’re using?
I’ve loaded your blog in 3 completely different web browsers and I must
say this blog loads a lot quicker then most. Can you recommend a good hosting provider at a reasonable price?
Thank you, I appreciate it!
I’m truly enjoying the design and layout of your site.
It’s a very easy on the eyes which makes it much more enjoyable for me to come here and visit more often. Did you hire out a developer
to create your theme? Fantastic work!
I was wondering if you ever considered changing the layout of
your website? Its very well written; I love what youve got to say.
But maybe you could a little more in the way of content so people could
connect with it better. Youve got an awful lot of text for only having 1 or two pictures.
Maybe you could space it out better?
A motivating discussion is worth comment.
I think that you ought to publish more on this subject, it might not be a taboo matter but generally people don’t speak about such topics.
To the next! Many thanks!!
Diwali also known as Deepavali as well as the “holiday of lamps”,
is an ancient Hindu festival celebrated in autumn every year.
The festival spiritually signifies the triumph
of light over darkness, knowledge over ignorance, good over evil, and
hope over despair. The event preparations and rites typically go
over a five-day interval, but the main festival night of Diwali coincides with the darkest, new moon night of
the Hindu Lunisolar month Kartika. In the Gregorian calendar, Diwali night falls between mid-Oct and mid-November.
Does anyone know, is there a way to enter a date range – eg Christmas Hols 2014/12/24 to 2015/01/15
Thanks
Thanks .. Nice Post!!!
Andrew Wheatley. Please indicate the time format after the date format. I want to include a 2 hour item example from ,2015/07/06 ,08:00:00 – 09:00:00
I am genuinely adoring the theme/design of the site. Do you face virtually any browser compatibility difficulties?