Creating your Own Outlook Calendar Files

One useful feature of Outlook is the ability to import custom calendar items from a single file. Typically, this might be Bank / Public Holidays, or perhaps your Pay Dates or School Terms dates. They’re easy to create, and easy to share!

I’m often asked to create such files, for one event or another.

So, rather than just create them, I thought this would be a good opportunity to show you how to do this yourself.

Creating them is very simple, and doesn’t take too long.

To start, open ‘Note Pad’ from your start menu. Goto Fileà Save as. Change the ‘Save as Type’ to ‘All Files’

Immediately save the file as <filename>.hol (note the .hol file extension – it’s important)

At the top of the file, give you set of entries a name enclosed by square brackets:

Then, you need to tell it how many entries you will have (you can add/amend this later)

Now, we need to add a line for each entry we want, and what date it relates to. Dates should be in the format yyyy/mm/dd

Add all the other entries. Your entry can be anything. I usually include the Clocks changing dates in mine.

Once you’re done, double check the number of entries matches the number you put at the top. Then, save you file and close Notepad.

You should be able to then open your file, which will prompt you to add them to Outlook.

And there you have it, holidays added to Outlook, in just the way you like it.

And that’s it! Send it around to your colleagues & friends!

Example: 2013 UK Bank Holidays

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