Calendar is a personal calendar application made by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...

for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

. It offers synchronization of calendars using

Microsoft Exchange Server Microsoft Exchange Server is a mail server and calendaring server developed by Microsoft. It runs exclusively on Windows Server operating systems. The first version was called Exchange Server 4.0, to position it as the successor to the related ...

Outlook.com Outlook.com is a webmail service that is part of the Microsoft 365 product family. It offers mail, calendaring, contacts, and tasks services. Founded in 1996 by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith as Hotmail, it was acquired by Microsoft in 1997 ...

Apple's

iCloud iCloud is a cloud service from Apple Inc. launched on October 12, 2011 as a successor to MobileMe. , the service had an estimated 850 million users, up from 782 million users in 2016. iCloud enables users to sync their data to the cloud, inclu ...

calendar service, and

Google Calendar Google Calendar is a time-management and scheduling calendar service developed by Google. It became available in beta release April 13, 2006, and in general release in July 2009, on the web and as mobile apps for the Android and iOS platforms. ...

. It supports the popular

iCalendar The Internet Calendaring and Scheduling Core Object Specification (iCalendar) is a media type which allows users to store and exchange calendaring and scheduling information such as events, to-dos, journal entries, and free/busy information, a ...

2.0 format.

History

Microsoft first included a Calendar

application Application may refer to: Mathematics and computing * Application software, computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks ** Application layer, an abstraction layer that specifies protocols and interface methods used in a c ...

(shortened to app) in Windows 1.0, which was included through

Windows 3.1 Windows 3.1 is a major release of Microsoft Windows. It was released to manufacturing on April 6, 1992, as a successor to Windows 3.0. Like its predecessors, the Windows 3.1 series ran as a shell on top of MS-DOS. Codenamed Janus, Windows ...

, and was replaced by Schedule+ in Windows for Workgroups and

Windows NT 3.1 Windows NT 3.1 is the first major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft, released on July 27, 1993. At the time of Windows NT's release, Microsoft's Windows 3.1 desktop environment had established brand recognit ...

. Schedule+ was later moved from Windows to the

Microsoft Office Microsoft Office, or simply Office, is the former name of a family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. It was first announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at COMDEX in Las Vegas. Initially a marketin ...

suite, and Windows did not include another Calendar application until Windows Calendar in

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

. Calendar had been created by Beta 2 of Windows Vista.

Windows Vista

This version supports sharing, subscribing, and publishing of calendars on WebDAV-enabled web servers and network shares. It has always supported .ics files, and the subscription feature enables syncing with Google Calendar. Its interface matches Windows Vista Mail's, but the two apps are not connected in this operating system. The default calendar can be renamed. On the calendar

taskbar A taskbar is an element of a graphical user interface which has various purposes. It typically shows which programs are currently running. The specific design and layout of the taskbar varies between individual operating systems, but generally a ...

applet In computing, an applet is any small application that performs one specific task that runs within the scope of a dedicated widget engine or a larger program, often as a plug-in. The term is frequently used to refer to a Java applet, a program ...

, there is a date grid on the left side and a

skeuomorph A skeuomorph (also spelled skiamorph, ) is a derivative object that retains ornamental design cues (attributes) from structures that were necessary in the original. Skeuomorphs are typically used to make something new feel familiar in an effort t ...

istic analogue clock and a digital clock underneath on the right side. Additional clocks displaying different

time zones Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, t ...

can be added to the view. On the date grid (left side), dates far in the past or future can be looked up by zooming out by clicking on the date range indicator above the calendar grid, until each tile is a decade (e.g. 2010-2019, 2020-2029).''Quickly Navigate Your Calendar to Find the Day of any Given Date'' – Adam Pash – June 16th, 2009 – LifeHacker
/ref> This version has later been inherited on

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...

Windows 8

A new version of Calendar with a text-heavy was added to

Windows 8 Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012; it was subsequently made available for download via MSDN and TechNet on August 15, 2012, and later to ...

as one of many apps written to run full-screen or snapped as part of Microsoft's

Metro design language Microsoft Design Language (or MDL), previously known as Metro, is a design language created by Microsoft. This design language is focused on typography and simplified icons, absence of clutter, increased content to chrome ratio ("content bef ...

philosophy. It is one of three apps on Windows that originate from

Microsoft Outlook Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager software system from Microsoft, available as a part of the Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365 software suites. Though primarily an email client, Outlook also includes such functions as Calen ...

, the other two being

Mail The mail or post is a system for physically transporting postcards, letters, and parcels. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. Since the mid-19th century, national postal sys ...

and

People A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of prope ...

apps. Structurally, the three apps are one and are installed and uninstalled as such. But each has its own user interface. Calendar in Windows 8 originally supported

, Exchange,

, and

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dust ...

calendars. Because of API changes, Facebook and Google calendars can no longer be directly synced on Windows 8. Like many Microsoft apps introduced for Windows 8, many of the features are hidden in

the charms The Charms are an American garage rock band from Somerville, Massachusetts, United States, who were formed in 2002. Following 8 straight years of releasing records and touring the band went on a hiatus and returned for a few one off shows befor ...

or a menu at the bottom of the screen that is triggered by right clicking. Different calendars can be labeled with different colors. When a user with a Microsoft account adds a calendar account on one computer with Windows 8 Calendar, the account will be automatically added to all other Windows 8 computers the user is logged into. .ics files are not supported in this version.

Windows 10

Calendar has preset server configurations for Outlook.com, Exchange, Google Calendar, and

Calendar. Users can set it to use the system theme or choose a custom accent color, background image, and light/dark preference. Windows 10 Calendar has multi-window support for viewing and editing events. Different calendars can be labeled with different colors, and events can be rearranged by dragging and dropping. The default interface is Month View, but users can also use Day, Week, and Year views and print these views. The Windows 10 app also uses a flyout settings panel and a mini Ribbon interface in the viewing pane. The day of the year and calendar events show on the live tile. Like the Vista version, the important controls are readily visible and use icons to match the system's. Accounts can be grouped and relabeled, but folders cannot be edited from within the app. .ics support was added to this version in time for the Windows 10 Anniversary Update.

History

Windows Vista

Windows 8

Windows 10

See also

References

Further reading