Outlook.com deprecating subscribed .ics / iCal calendars

Question

So apparently Microsoft is deprecating subscribed .ics / iCal calendars from outlook.com. This is actually the second Microsoft support person to tell me this over the past month as I've been trying to get support for 2 subscribed .ics calendars that suddenly aren't syncing to my personal outlook.com calendar following the initial import, for example whenever the event organizers modify existing events or adds new events. Instead of trying to fix the issues, this is what they're telling me.

Not surprisingly, subscribed .ics calendars work completely fine in Google Calendar and interestingly they work even with my paid Microsoft 365 business account. Sure I can use my Microsoft 365 business account to subscribe to these, which actually isn't ideal. But the bigger problem is for others in my family who rely on a number of these subscribed .ics calendars that they're subscribed to for hobbies and sports activities that their coaches and team managers update constantly, which now will never update after the initial import.

Is there an official statement about Microsoft removing subscribed ics iCal calendar capability? Completely ridiculous if it's in fact true!

Answer 1

Glenn thanks for responding although that's not at all the issue. This isn't regarding imported .ics files.

As I stated, this is regarding subscribed ics / iCal calendars which used to update and are supposed to update when a calendar owner makes changes to events or adds new events.

Microsoft instructional documentation is not up-to-date even though your support is telling me that subscribed ics / iCal calendars are no longer a feature of outlook.com.

• See https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/import-or-subscribe-to-a-calendar-in-outlook-on-the-web-503ffaf6-7b86-44fe-8dd6-8099d95f38df
• And in Outlook.com, when going to Calendar/ Add calendar / Subscribe from web it clearly states, "Paste the url for the calendar you would like to subscribe to below. Any edits that the author of the calendar makes will be updated automatically"

Quite a feature to remove from consumers, considering subscribed calendars still work perfectly fine with Microsoft 365 business accounts and of course as always when something doesn't work with Microsoft services, with Google it does making it very hard for me to justify staying in the Microsoft ecosystem.

This is a well-documented issue as people on this forum and other forums are having the same issue -- started a few months ago. I hope this is just some kind of technical development issue and that the Microsoft support staff who told me you're removing this feature were mistaken and instead it will be fixed. Please let us know either way. Thanks.

Answer 2

Not sure what sort of ill-informed manager would make the decision to deprecate the option to subscribe to internet calendars and keep them up to date. I've used the functionality to subscribe to calendars from a wide variety of providers. Deprecating this feature is a poor choice and needs to be revisited. I hadn't had a lot of incentive to move from outlook.com, but if this is truly the case, I'll be looking for alternatives soon.

And yes - this is completely different from importing a one-time ICS file/event.

Answer 3

Hi all,

We have recently received some reports of users who are experiencing issues with subscribing to .ics/ical calendars and are actively investigating these issues with high priority. We apologize for any disruptions in this workflow. 

We also wanted to re-affirm that Outlook has no plans to deprecate its support for .ics/ical calendars, holidays, and professional sports team schedules. This is an important scenario for our customers, and we continue to evaluate improvements to this scenario. 

This issue will be added to the known issues list shortly, so you can get updates on it here: Fixes or workarounds for recent issues on Outlook.com (microsoft.com)

Thank you for checking in about this,

Rebecca

Answer 4

I have 4 external calendars in my setup, as well as my work calendar and several other calendars. This is one of the main reasons I've stuck with outlook for many many years...

Why would such a simple and powerful feature be removed?

Answer 5

Sorry Glenn, I think you've got your wires crossed. We are talking about "Subscribe from web", not "Upload from file" on Outlook.com.

This feature is a must have for me and something that I've been relying on for years. I subscribe to the calendar feed from my part-time university course, my Garmin Connect feed for my fitness training programme, my Kayak feed for all of my travel reservations and schedules, my work feed, my girlfriend's calendar and my social club events feed.

Clearly, some of these calendars could be accessed by signing in to the account directly with a client application (and at outlook.live.com before May this year), but this is not always possible. My company does not allow sign-in to work accounts from privately-owned devices, and I'm sure my girlfriend and my social club are not going to hand over their passwords!