Outlook Holiday Error: Election Day

Of all the years to get the date wrong for the US Election day, it had to be this year. Fortunately, it's a week early, so no one is going to miss voting because the calendar was wrong.

The HOL file supplied with Outlook 2010 has the US Election day on November 1 (don't we wish!), when it really is November 8. The date was corrected in a later HOL file; on my Outlook 2013 installation, the HOL file dated July 2014 has it on the correct date. Unfortunately, the calendar isn't updated automatically when a newer HOL file is released. Users need to delete the old holidays and run the Add Holidays wizard to add them back. (Outlook.com and Office 365 Exchange Online's Interesting Calendars feature will automatically update.)

If your calendar has it on the wrong date you have two options to fix:

Drag the event to November 8 (or open it and change the date).
Use a list view and delete the holidays currently on your calendar then restore the holidays using a newer HOL file.

While it's easier to drag the event to the correct date, this error indicates you are using an old holiday list. It’s not unusual for the HOL files to have corrections and Microsoft adds new holidays to some countries/locations over the years. For this reason, I recommend deleting the holidays from your calendar and importing from a newer HOL file.

To remove old holidays:

Use a List view and group by Category. If you added the Holiday category to other events, group by Location too.

Go to the View tab, click Expand/Collapse, Collapse All Groups

Delete the Holiday group (or the groups for the locations you added)

If you have Office 2016 and have current updates installed, your HOL file should be the newest one available. Go to File, Options, Calendar and click Add Holidays then select the locations you want to add to your calendar then click OK.

If you have a retail or volume license, you might have a slightly older HOL file (Election Day should be correct in it though). This HOL file is the newest one shipped with Office 2016. After downloading the HOL file, double click on it to open the Add Holidays dialog, select your locations and click OK. This HOL file will work with Outlook 2007, 2010 and 2013.