Over the past several months, Windows Live Calendar has been in beta. We’ve been experimenting with features, listening to your feedback, and polishing up the service. Now the calendar is ready for everyone and we’re excited to roll it out in more than 45 languages. Here are some of the new features you’ll see.

Expandable weeks let you see more events
Most people look at their calendars in the month view, but until now the grid could only display a limited number of events. Now, you can stay in the month view yet choose to see all of the events in a day by expanding one week at a time. Just select “Show More” in the top right of the calendar grid to always show all of your events or click the “# more…” link to expand just one week.

Collapsed View:


Expanded View:

Charms help you personalize your calendar

Charms are unique to Windows Live Calendar and allow you to add an icon to each of your events. It’s a fun way to visually display your events and allows you to see more events in the month view. One of our team members came up with the idea for charms during his off-hours, and we thought the idea was so much fun that we wanted everyone to have them. To add a charm to an event, just select “More details” and choose a charm to fit your event.

Tweaks and tricks to make you faster
We've made some changes across Windows Live Calendar to match the overall style of the Windows Live services, and we've added support for the Safari web browser. One of our favorite changes is the "split button." Now when you select the arrow next to the "New" button in the header menu, you can immediately create a new event, to-do, calendar or social event. And, speaking of social events, they use Windows Live Events and are a great way to plan parties and share discussions, photos and other stuff with people attending the same event.

We've also made some improvements to calendar sharing. Now, when you share a calendar with friends, family or the public, it's easier than ever. If you want to share your calendar with someone from your contact list, click Add people and then select their name from your contact list, just like you would in Hotmail. It’s a great way to coordinate your family calendar—give it a try! 

Meeting invitations are coming soon
In the next few weeks we’ll be adding the ability to send meeting invitations for an event. You’ll be able to invite others to events and users of many calendaring services and software solutions can accept them for automatic addition to their own calendars. These invitations are also a great way to organize quick dinners, dates, or any other event you can think of.

The move to Windows Live Calendar from the original (MSN) Calendar

In the next few months, for those people using the original (MSN) calendar, we will be moving you to the new Windows Live Calendar. Don't worry; we'll do most of the moving for you! We’ll move your current calendar appointments, meeting requests, tasks, and notes to your new Windows Live Calendar. You’ll be able to find your tasks and notes in the new to-do list. This FAQ has more information about the move and the actions that users may need to take to prepare.

Great features already in Windows Live Calendar

With all the news about our new features, we don’t want you to forget about the other cool stuff that we’ve released over the last year that is now out of beta, as well:

• Synchronization with the calendar in Windows Live Mail which is free software that allows you to manage your mail, calendar and contacts online or offline in an easy-to-use desktop client

• Synchronization with Microsoft Office Outlook via the Outlook Connector so that you can display and update all of your Windows Live Calendars in Outlook 2003 and 2007

• Calendar sharing with friends and family

• To-dos for task management

• Support for multiple calendar views

• Access to your calendar via the calendar “badge” from Windows Live Toolbar and Windows Live Groups (stay tuned for a blog post on how to use the badge yourself)

• “Add to Calendar API” for quick add of events and calendars from other web sites (stay tuned for a blog post on this next week)

• Birthday calendars that automatically create events and reminders for your contacts’ birthdays

• Holiday calendars that are automatically added to your calendar list depending on your country

• iCal (.ics) subscriptions and import for public calendars

• Creation of Event Space invitations (“Social Events”) from within Calendar

• Integration with Windows Live Events allows events created there to display automatically in Windows Live Calendar

• Integration with Windows Live Groups allows calendars created there to be displayed in your calendar list

We’re looking forward to hearing your thoughts. Please continue to send feedback about things you love about the new calendar or things you’d like to see improved. 

Thanks for using Windows Live Calendar!

The Windows Live Calendar team