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Microsoft's Outlook.com calendar gets a makeover

Microsoft has revamped its Hotmail calendar, turning it into a modernized Outlook.com.

Mary Jo Foley
Mary Jo Foley has covered the tech industry for 30 years for a variety of publications, including ZDNet, eWeek and Baseline. She is the author of Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft plans to stay relevant in the post-Gates era (John Wiley & Sons, 2008). She also is the cohost of the "Windows Weekly" podcast on the TWiT network.
Mary Jo Foley
2 min read

Microsoft is finally applying a metro look and feel to its Web-based calendar.

On April 2, Microsoft officials revealed that the new Outlook.com calendar is rolling out now and will be available around the world this week at https://calendar.live.com/.

More from today's blog post about the calendar refresh:

"Outlook.com uses Exchange ActiveSync to sync your mail, calendar, and address book on your smartphone, tablet, in the new Outlook 2013, and with the Mail, Calendar, and People apps on your new PC or tablet running Windows 8. You can also use the Outlook connector to integrate your calendar with previous versions of the Outlook desktop software. Connecting your calendar to your mobile device is easy."

Microsoft officials hinted last summer that the calendar refresh was coming shortly after the new Outlook.com Web mail service was announced, which was July 31, 2012. But up until today, officials have declined to say when users could expect the updated Calendar.

Because I get this question often from Hotmail users who are in the midst of moving to (or being moved by Microsoft to) Outlook.com, I'd like to point out the way to see your Calendar in Outlook.com is to click on the downward arrow next to the Outlook logo (upper left). By doing so, users will find their contacts (now known as People), Calendar and Skydrive cloud-storage options.

Update: One feature some were expecting, but that seemingly didn't make it into this update is Skype integration. Supposedly that is still coming, but it's yet another one of those things for which we don't have an official date target.

This story originally appeared as "Microsoft's Outlook.com calendar gets Metro-ized" on ZDNet.