Last month's tip on Automatically Adding Public Holidays to Outlook Calendars was very popular. Hmmm....I guess we all like to know when the really important stuff is coming up. I had a number of people mention that they wished there was a way to customize that list, and add company specific holidays, events, or deadlines. (For instance, your HR Department may need to note payroll deadlines and schedule policy updates, accounting may need to note filing/submission deadlines, you may have annual board meetings, etc.)  This can also be a fairly simple way to distribute company holiday/event information to employees on an annual basis instead of printing and distributing lists by hand, and can help ensure the information actually makes it to staff calendars.

The information that Outlook uses to generate the holiday list is stored in a simple text file, and you can edit it and create your own additions, then distribute it to employees. It's a little more challenging than last month's tip, but if you want to do it, here's how:

First, make a backup of your Holiday File:

1. Exit Outlook if it is running.
2. In Microsoft Windows® Explorer, locate the following file: Outlook.hol. It can typically be found at: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office11\1033\Outlook.hol
3. Create a copy of the file with a different file name. For example, you can call it Outlook_hol.bak. Changing the file extension from .hol to .bak is important, as you don't want to have 2 - .hol files muddying up the works.

Next, open the file for editing:

1. Right click Outlook.hol and select "Open With." Select "Notepad" from the list, and make sure the box beside "Always use this program to open this type of file" is not checked.
   
2. Click "OK."
   
3. Once the list is open in Notepad, click inside the window and then press CTRL+END on your keyboard to go to the end of the file.
   

To add Custom Events:

1. Type in a name for your custom calendar that everyone will recognize, and then type in the events and dates in the following format:

[Company Events and Holidays] 9
Company Christmas Party, 2006/12/15
Company Picnic, 2007/06/15
Bonus Program Payment, 2007/01/15
Bonus Program Payment, 2008/01/15
Bonus Program Payment, 2009/01/15
Benefit enrollment period ends today, 2007/02/27
Deadline for submitting expense reports for previous quarter, 2007/01/15
Deadline for submitting expense reports for previous quarter, 2007/04/15
Deadline for submitting expense reports for previous quarter, 2007/07/15

That's a little longish, but there are several important things to note about the format.

1. The name of your company events should be between square brackets at the beginning of your list, with at least one row between it and the ending of the previous list.
2. Next, be sure to insert one space, then put the number of events on your custom calendar. (You may need to go back and plug that in when you are finished.)
3. The events need to have the event name as you would like it to appear on the calendar, followed by a comma, space, and the date in the format shown.
   
4. You need to duplicate the entry for each year you want the event to recur - notice that the "Bonus Program Payment" occurs on the 15th of January each year through 2009. If you only put a line in for one date, it will not recur the following year.
5. The same principle applies for quarterly or monthly deadlines, etc. - they need to be entered once per line with the date they apply to. 
   

It looks like it might take a while, but this actually goes pretty quickly, as you can just type the event entry once, cut and paste multiple copies of it, then change the date.

To add the new holidays to your Outlook Calendar:

1. Click "Tools" and select "Options."
2. When the "Options" multi-tabbed dialog box appears, select the "Preferences" tab.
3. Click the "Calendar Options" button.
4. Click the "Add Holidays" button.
5. When the dialog box appears, check the boxes beside the company events you just added, in our case from the example above that would be: "Company Events and Holidays."
6. Click "OK" to close the dialog box.

To distribute the Custom list to your staff:

1. After verifying that everything has shown up as you would like it to in your Outlook, copy the file to a shared folder or drive, and notify your staff of it's location.
2. Have them copy the file to the following location on their local machine: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office11\1033\
   
3. Have them follow the instructions above to import the company holidays you have created.

As always, if you have any questions of comments, please let me know!

        

 

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