How to Automatically Add Holiday Calendars for an Organization in Outlook
Question details
The administrator wants to automatically deploy or push country-specific holiday calendars to all users' Outlook accounts across an entire organization.
- Product
- Microsoft Outlook
- Device & OS
- not provided
- Scenario
- Setting up organization-wide calendar configurations via Intune or Microsoft 365 Admin Center for all employees.
- Observed behavior
- Microsoft 365 does not currently offer a built-in, standard method to automatically push a holiday calendar to every user's individual account via Intune or the admin center.
Ensure you have Microsoft 365 Exchange admin permissions if you plan to implement the organization-wide shared mailbox workaround.
Create a Shared Mailbox for Organizational Holiday Calendars
Since Microsoft 365 does not support direct organizational deployment of holiday calendars, administrators can use a shared mailbox with full access permissions to auto-map a centralized calendar for all users.
This administrative workaround ensures that all users receive access to the required holiday calendar without needing to add it manually to their personal accounts.
Log into the Microsoft 365 Exchange admin center and navigate to the mailboxes section to create a new, dedicated shared mailbox for organizational holidays.
Log into this newly created shared mailbox using Outlook on the web, navigate to the Calendar view, and subscribe to the required country-specific holiday calendar.
Return to the Exchange admin center, select the shared holiday mailbox, and grant 'Full Access' permissions to all necessary users or security groups within your organization.
Thanks to the Exchange automapping feature, the shared mailbox and its holiday calendar will automatically populate in the Outlook desktop clients of all users who were granted access.
Instruct Users to Subscribe Individually
If the shared mailbox workaround is not feasible for your organization, end users must manually subscribe to holiday calendars themselves.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Can I use Microsoft Intune to deploy holiday calendars automatically?
Currently, Microsoft Intune does not support the automatic deployment or configuration of holiday calendars to individual Outlook accounts. You must use the Exchange admin center shared mailbox workaround or have users add them manually.
Why isn't the shared holiday mailbox showing up in users' Outlook immediately?
The automapping feature relies on Microsoft Exchange background synchronization. It can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours for the permissions to propagate and the shared mailbox to appear in the users' desktop Outlook clients.
Can users remove a holiday calendar added via a shared mailbox?
Users cannot permanently delete a calendar from a shared mailbox unless they have explicit delete permissions for that mailbox. However, they can choose to uncheck or hide the shared calendar from their personal Outlook view at any time.
Does the shared mailbox workaround apply to both Outlook desktop and Outlook on the web?
Yes, once a user is granted full access to the shared mailbox, they will be able to view the shared holiday calendar in both the Outlook desktop client (via automapping) and by accessing it through Outlook on the web.
