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Importing Holidays into your Outlook Calendar 

In both Outlook 2003 and 2007, you have the ability to add a standard set of holidays, such as the Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July, to your calendar as all-day, no-reminder events.  However these holidays are not added to your calendar by default - you must manually tell Outlook to add these events for you.

Additionally, Outlook 2003 only came bundled with holiday events up through January 21, 2008.  If you are using Outlook 2003 and you would like to add or update the holidays in your calendar through 2012, you'll need to install an update for Outlook, available here: Oulook Holiday File Download.

To add holidays to your calendar in Outlook 2003 and 2007, perform the following steps from within Outlook:

  1. From the Tools menu, select Options.
  2. Click on the Calendar Options button, as shown in the graphic below.
  3. Click on the Add Holidays button, as shown below.

  4. From the resulting list, select which country for which you want to add holidays to your calendar, then click OK.
  5. If you receive a prompt stating "Holidays for United States are already installed. Do you want to install them again?", click Yes.
  6. A message should appear stating "The holidays were added to your Calendar." At this point click OK.
  7. Finally Click OK, then OK again to return to Outlook. Holidays for the country you selected should now be added to your calendar.