Taskbar Calendar

Question

I am really disappointed that Windows 11 has disabled the calendar, when clicking on the date and time in the task bar. I often use this when working in a document or website and need a quick overview to see what the date will be in a few weeks. It has been very handy and I believe Microsoft was shortsighted in eliminating this. My IT department has re-enabled it a few times, but it never lasts.

Answer 1

Hi Rohde, Mary P,

I completely understand how frustrating that must be, and I really appreciate you sharing your feedback.

While the current Windows 11 version has made some changes to the taskbar behavior, there are still a few ways to access this functionality:

1. Press Windows key + N to open the Notifications & Calendar panel quickly.
2. Open the Calendar app, right-click its icon on the taskbar, and choose Pin to taskbar for quick access.
3. Third-party alternatives: Some users install lightweight calendar widgets (e.g., from the Microsoft Store) that stay on the desktop for quick reference.

I hope this information is useful to some extent. It's really appreciated of you to accept the answer as a way to share your experience with the community. Thank you

Vivian

Answer 2

Hi Rohde, Mary P,

How is everything? Have you been able to solve the problem? If you have, it's really appreciated to accept the answer as a way to share your experience with the community. Thank you :)

Vivian

Answer 3

In Windows 11, the calendar feature in the taskbar is integrated with the Notifications and Action Center. If the calendar is not opening when you click on the date and time, it may be due to the Notifications and Action Center being disabled. This behavior is by design, and the calendar will not function if this setting is turned off.

To check if the Notifications and Action Center is disabled, you can follow these steps:

1. Press Win + R to open the Run dialog. Type gpedit.msc and press Enter.
2. Navigate to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Start Menu and Taskbar or Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Start Menu and Taskbar.
3. Look for the Remove Notifications and Action Center policy. If this policy is set to Enabled, it means the Notifications and Action Center is disabled, which would prevent the calendar from opening.

You may want to discuss this with your IT department to ensure that the Notifications and Action Center is enabled to restore the calendar functionality in the taskbar.

Answer 4

Good moring Rohde, Mary P,

To make it clear for you, I'd like to provide a fairly comprehensive explanation. I hope you don't mind spending some time going through it. Microsoft did not disable or remove the calendar flyout in Windows 11. The feature is very much present and intended to be a core part of the OS. What you're describing is a classic symptom of a policy or setting that is being forcibly reapplied by your organization's IT management system, which is why it "never lasts" after your IT department fixes it temporarily.

Your laptop is almost certainly enrolled in a domain or managed with a tool like Microsoft Intune or Group Policy. These systems allow your IT department to push standardized settings to all company devices to ensure security and compliance.

There are two primary policy settings that control the taskbar's functionality, one of them is Remove Notifications and Action Center. This is a legacy name, but in modern Windows, this policy can disable the entire system tray flyout, which includes the calendar.

When your IT department "re-enabled it," they were likely temporarily overriding or removing this policy from your specific machine. However, the central management system runs on a schedule, often every 90 minutes or upon reboot. When it checks in, it sees that your device is out of compliance with the defined rules and reapplies the policy, locking the feature down again.

In this case, I think you need to review the Applied Policies, look at the Resultant Set of Policy (RSOP) or Intune Device Configuration profile on your machine to see which specific setting is causing the lockdown. Then check Policy Precedence. It's possible a conflicting policy from a higher-level Organizational Unit (OU) is overwriting a local exception. The most sustainable solution is not to change the policy for everyone, but to create a new Active Directory or Intune security group (e.g., "Calendar-Flyout-Allowed"), place your user account in it, and configure the policy to not apply to that group.

I hope you find something useful here. It's also appreciated of you to accept the answer as a way to share your experience with the community. Thank you :)

Vivian

Answer 5

Good morning,

Just want to know how it is going with your issue? Should you need more information, feel free to leave a message.

VP