How to add a birthday to Outlook calendar and manage reminders

What is the Birthday calendar in Outlook?

Microsoft Outlook includes a special Birthday calendar that automatically collects birthdays stored in your contacts and displays them as recurring annual events.

When you fill in the birthday field in a contact, Outlook creates an all-day event on that date. That event can be viewed in both the Birthday calendar and the primary calendar alongside your other meetings and appointments.

The Birthday calendar is available in all Outlook applications, including classic Outlook 365 – 2016, the new Outlook app, Outlook on the web, and Outlook.com.

A few helpful details about birthdays in Outlook:

• The Birthday calendar is only available for Microsoft accounts, including Microsoft 365 work or school accounts, Outlook.com, and Hotmail. It is not available for third-party accounts such as Gmail, Yahoo, etc.
• Birthday events are synchronized across all Outlook apps connected to the same email account.
• Besides the calendar, upcoming birthdays are displayed in the To-Do Bar (in classic Outlook) and the My Day pane (in new Outlook and Outlook on the web).
• Birthdays in Outlook are recurring yearly events that automatically appear each year on the same date.
• Birthdays are all-day events, but they do not block your availability or mark you as busy.
• In classic Outlook, a birthday reminder is created automatically, and you can customize or turn it off at any time.
• If needed, you can remove individual birthday events from the calendar or delete the birthday from the associated contact.

How to add birthdays to Outlook calendar

The Birthday calendar gets its information from your Outlook contacts. Birthday events are created automatically for any contacts that already have a birthday set. If the person is not in your contacts yet, simply create a new contact and add their birthday information.

How to add a birthday to calendar in Outlook 365 – 2016

If someone's birthday is missing in your Outlook calendar, you can add it by updating their contact information as shown below.

1. In the Outlook Navigation pane, select People.
2. Depending on whether the contact already exists, do one of the following:
   • To add a birthday to an existing contact, double-click it or right-click and select Edit Contact.
   • To create a new contact, on the Home tab, in the New group, click New Contact or press the Ctrl + N shortcut.
3. On the Contact tab, in the Show group, click Details.
4. Enter the date in the Birthday box and, if desired, in the Anniversary box.
5. Click Save & Close.

The birthday is automatically added to both the Birthday calendar and to the main Outlook calendar as a recurring yearly event.

How to add birthdays in new Outlook and web

In new Outlook and Outlook on the web let you start either from a contact or from the Birthday calendar itself. Both methods lead to the same result.

Method 1: Add a birthday to an Outlook contact

If the person already exists in your contact list, simply update their information.

1. In the navigation pane, go to People.
2. To add a birthday to an existing contact, right-click it and select Edit. To create a new contact for the person, click New Contact on the ribbon.
3. In the contact form, select Others in the left pane.
4. Enter the birthday and, optionally, anniversary information.
5. Click Save.

After you save the contact, the birthday will appear in your Birthday calendar and repeat annually.

Method 2: Add birthday to Outlook calendar

If you are already in Calendar view, you can add a birthday there and let Outlook automatically create the contact for you.

1. In the navigation pane, select Calendar.
2. Right-click the Birthdays calendar and choose New birthday.
3. A new contact form will open.
4. On the Contact information tab, enter the person's name and email address.
5. Switch to the Other tab and enter the date of birth.
6. Click Save.

This method is especially handy when you want to add a birthday quickly without first going to your contacts list.

Birthday reminders in Outlook

In Outlook terms, birthdays are regular all-day calendar events. Like other events, they can include reminders, but the behavior differs depending on the Outlook version you use.

How to view birthdays in Outlook

All birthdays saved in your contacts are displayed in the Birthdays calendar. Outlook creates this calendar automatically for each email account, and it only shows birthdays from contacts stored under that account.

The Birthdays calendar is not displayed by default. As with any other Outlook calendar, you need to select it before its events become visible:

• In Outlook 365 – 2016, select the Birthdays calendar in the folder pane under My Calendars.
• In new Outlook and Outlook on the web, click Show all to expand My calendars, and then select Birthdays.

When the calendar is selected, birthdays saved in your contacts appear as all-day events. They are shown in your calendar but do not affect your availability.

How to change a birthday in Outlook calendar

As birthday events in Outlook are generated from contact information, the Birthday calendar itself is essentially read-only. To change a birthday, you need to update the corresponding contact record.

In new Outlook and Outlook on the web, the Birthday calendar includes an Edit option, but it does not currently work as it's supposed to. Depending on your account type, selecting Edit from a birthday event may produce unexpected results:

• With a Microsoft 365 work or school account, Outlook opens your own profile information instead of the contact whose birthday you selected.
• With a personal Outlook.com account, Outlook opens a blank contact form.

Because of this behavior, the only reliable way to change a birthday is to edit the contact directly:

1. In the navigation pane, select People.
2. Locate the contact, right-click it, and select Edit.
3. Change the birth date in the same field where it was originally added.
4. Click Save.

The Birthday calendar is updated automatically, and the new date will be reflected across all Outlook apps connected to the same account.

How to delete a birthday in Outlook

To remove a birthday from your Outlook calendar, follow these steps:

1. Open the calendar from which you want to remove a birthday: the Birthdays calendar or your main calendar.
2. Right-click the birthday you want to remove and select Delete.
3. If Outlook asks how much of the recurring event to delete, choose one of these options:
   • This event – deletes only the selected occurrence.
   • This and all following events – removes the selected occurrence and all future birthdays in that series.
   • All events in the series – deletes the birthday from your calendar completely.

How to add a birthday calendar in Outlook

If the Birthdays calendar is missing from My Calendars, you may be able to add it manually. This option is currently available in new Outlook and Outlook on the web.

1. In the Outlook Navigation pane, switch to Calendar.
2. In the folder pane on the left, click Add calendar.
3. In the Add calendar window that opens, select Birthdays in the left pane.
4. Under Birthdays, select the account where you want to add the calendar.
5. Select the Turn on the birthday calendar check box.

Close the window and look under My calendars. The Birthdays calendar should now appear and be ready to use.

Once added, you can customize Birthdays just like any other Outlook calendar. Right-click the calendar to access options such as changing the color, charm (an icon assigned to the calendar events), and more.

How to delete Birthday calendar in Outlook

The short answer is: you can't. Birthdays is a built-in Outlook calendar that is automatically generated from your contacts and cannot be permanently deleted.

Although the Delete option is included in the right-click calendar menu in classic Outlook, it only removes the calendar temporarily. After you switch to another Outlook module such as Mail or People, or restart Outlook, the Birthdays calendar reappears in the folder pane.

Instead of deleting the calendar, you can simply uncheck it to hide it from view.

How to create a shared birthday calendar in Outlook

Unfortunately, there is no quick way to share birthdays in Outlook, because the built-in Birthday calendar does not have the sharing option. The practical solution is to create a new blank calendar, add birthdays to it manually, and then share that calendar with others. The steps are:

1. Create a new calendar. Add a blank calendar in your version of Outlook. For step-by-step instructions, see How to create a custom Outlook calendar.
2. Add birthdays as recurring events. For each birthday, make an all-day event and configure it to repeat every year. For detailed guidance, refer to How to schedule a recurring event in Outlook.
3. Share the calendar. Share the custom birthday calendar with other people. For colleagues within the same organization, you can grant either viewing or editing permissions, so they can add their own birthdays to the shared calendar. For external users, you can only provide view access, allowing them to see the birthdays but not modify them. For the complete steps, see How to share Outlook calendar.

Admittedly, this approach requires a bit more setup than Outlook's auto-generated Birthday calendar. On the bright side, you only need to do it once. After that, Outlook takes care of the yearly recurrences for you.

Outlook contact birthdays not showing in calendar

If a birthday saved in a contact does not appear in your Outlook calendar, the issue is usually related to synchronization delays, account settings, or a problem with the contact itself. Here are a few things to check:

• Wait a few minutes after adding or updating the birthday. Outlook does not always create the corresponding birthday event immediately.
• Restart the Outlook desktop app or refresh the browser page if you are using Outlook on the web.
• Verify that the birthday is entered correctly in the contact record and that the contact has been saved.
• If you have multiple email accounts configured in Outlook, make sure the contact is stored under the correct account and that you are viewing the Birthdays calendar for that same account.
• If the birthday still does not appear, try deleting the contact and creating it again. Occasionally, Outlook fails to generate or update the birthday event for an existing contact, but recreating the contact usually solves the problem.

Frequently asked questions about birthday calendar

If you still have questions about how birthdays work in Outlook, the answers below cover some of the most common situations.

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