Holidays (2000)

[JimF]

I followed the instructions in the latest WOW 8.02 to obtain holidays from 2003-7. I deleted my existing holidays and downloaded and installed the holiday update. I then installed the US holidays (Tools, Options, Calendar, Add Holidays). However, when I go to Outlook Calendar view by category, I now have no holidays listed. I have repeated this process 3 times and am unable to show any holidays.
Jim

[jscher2000]

If you open one of the holidays, does it have Holiday in the Categories... box?

Since the Add Holidays... feature has no other options you can choose, and the outlook.txt holidays file doesn't let you specify a category, this is one of those things that "has to work." Unless it's a bug. Do you have SR-1a and/or later service packs (SP2, SP3) loaded? After loading both SR-1a and SP2 and some security patches, my Help|About box reads:

Microsoft Outlook 2000 SR-1 (9.0.0.5414)
Corporate or Workgroup - Security Update

[JimF]

I recently installed SP3. My Help About box reads SP-3 (9.0.0.6627) Internet Mail Only - Security Update. I noticed that if I go back to previous holidays (e.g. July 4, 2002), they do not have a category assigned. If I assign that date to the Holiday category, it appears in the View by Category. These previous dates were assigned to the holiday category until I deleted the holidays in the View by Category per the WOW instructions. When I install the new holidays, I find that none of them are assigned to the holiday category (pick a holiday and double click on it to see its properties). I also noticed that July 4, 2003 is not listed as a holiday after installing the holiday update.

[MaryJ]

Are you installing the right file? Search for a file called outlook.txt - it should be 141kb. The first lines are:
[Algeria] 40
Eid al Adha (1st day), 2003/02/11
Eid al Adha (1st day), 2004/02/01

When you say you go back to the previous holidays, how are you doing it? The file should overwrite the old one and you said you deleted the old ones...

[JimF]

I am following the instructions in WOW:

Start Outlook. Make sure you're using Outlook 2000 by clicking Help | About and confirming that it says "Outlook 2000". This tip only works for Outlook 2000.

> Bring up the Calendar. Click View | Current View | By Category. Click the bar marked "Categories: Holiday" and hit the Delete key. All your old Holidays are gone. (If you don't have a bar marked "Categories: Holiday" you didn't have any imported holidays in the first place - which is just as well.) File | Exit out of Outlook. Shut down Word, too, while you're at it.

> Download outlhol.exe by clicking the Download button at http://office.microsoft.com/downloads/2000/OutlHol.aspx . Save it some place convenient.

> Run outlhol.exe by double-clicking on it. The program will give you the standard indecipherable End User License Agreement screen, and inform you when it's finished.

> Start Outlook again. Click Tools | Options | Preferences | Calendar Options | Add Holidays. You'll be presented with a list of countries. Check the boxes next to the countries that interest you, but don't go overboard (see the next section). Click OK.

> After the holidays are installed, bring up the Calendar, and if you can't see the list sorted by category, click View | Current View | By Category. Take a gander at your new holiday list.

As you can see, there is no mention of a file outlook.txt. Where would I obtain that and how is it installed?

If I pick a previous holiday, e.g. July 4, 2002, I can see that it is not marked as a holiday. If I select View by Category, there is no holiday category listed.

[MaryJ]

if you deleted the holiday's marked as holiday, then you added July 4th yourself at some point in time, because you deleted the one mixrosoft created for you. (if it's not called independance day, ms didn't add it)

search your drive for outlook.txt - the exe installs it on your drive. There should only be one outlook.txt, somewhere under the office folder. (if you open the exe with winzip, you'll see it too)

[JimF]

I found Outlook.txt in the directory C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice1033. It has the same first lines as you cited.

If I go to View by Categories, pick the None category, and pick any day that I know should be a holiday, I find that it does not have any category assigned to it, especially the holiday category. I did not create a holiday, I picked an existing day (pre 2003) that should have been designated as a holiday (and probably was before I deleted the holiday category per the WOW instructions).

So if Outlook.txt is correct and on my computer, why do the holidays not appear in Outlook?

[jscher2000]

Deleting the Holiday category in the By Categories... view should only delete the holidays, and not remove the Holiday category from your standard category list. If it got removed from the list, I guess there must be a way to add it back in. Most logical appears to be to open the Categories... dialog, click the Master Category List button, and then Reset. Best to check the online help to see what other consequences this might have.

[JimF]

Let me try this again. First, the holiday category has not been deleted. I can pick any day and assign it to the holiday category.

After I downloaded the new holidays per the WOW instructions, when I go to View by Category, there is no grouping for "holidays". That tells me that no date has been assigned to the holiday category. If I pick a date, any date, and assign it to the holiday category, when I go to the View by Category, I now have a holiday group and that date appears under it.

All of the 2003-2007 holidays that were supposed to have been installed via Outlook.txt are not assigned to the holiday category. I can pick any date, say Dec 25, 2003 - in the Day/Week/Month View, this day does not say "Christmas". In the By Category View, this day is not listed under the holiday group (nor are any other holidays). If I pick the day itself, the event window that comes up has no subject and no category assigned (it is blank other than the date).

If I pick a date before 2003, in the Day/Week/Month View, it will give the name of the holiday. But in the detailed view of that date, the category is blank.

[jscher2000]

Well, I double-checked the Knowledge Base and didn't find anything. It sounds like a genuine and serious bug, getting the dates but not the subject lines! Would you be willing to try an experiment and re-import the old holidays? I'm attaching a pared down OUTLOOK.TXT file that contains just the United States holidays for 1998-2002. You'll need to rename the newer one and copy this one into the appropriate folder (or perhaps if Outlook doesn't find the one it's looking for you can browse to the new one).

Any better?

[JimF]

After importing the holiday file you provided, here are my current symptoms:
- the holidays (pre and post 1/1/2003 all appear to have subject lines.
- in the calendar view by category, the only holiday taht appears is the one I previously assigned to the holiday category.
- 1/1/03 has a correct subject line and when I double click on it, it shows that it is assigned to the holiday category (even though it does not appear in the By Category View.
- an oddity, I have noticed that none of the files I have downloaded , including yours, has a subject line for the date July 4, 2003.
- if I pick a date and assign it to the holiday category, it will appear under Holidays in the By Category View.

And a question. You stated that your file contained holidays for 1998-2002. Why then do I see holidays in 2003 (but only through Thanksgiving 2003)?

[jscher2000]

I think some neural pathways in your copy of Outlook have become scrambled somehow. Whether an update caused this, or something else, you might have to use the Repair feature of the Office installer to freshen your installation. Not that there is any assurance this will fix it, but it's hard to see any other way forward at all.

> You stated that your file contained holidays for 1998-2002. Why then do I see holidays in 2003 (but only
> through Thanksgiving 2003)?

Pretty clearly they didn't come from the file I posted, so... I don't know!

[JimF]

I performed the Repair function and I do not see any difference in the previously described symptoms. Something appears to be messed up but I can't figure out where. The central problem is that the holidays are there but are not assigned to the Holiday category. If I click on a holiday and assign it to the Holiday category, everything would seem OK. But I would have to do this for every holiday. Frustrating but the end of the world.

Thanks anyway for the help.