Hi Hilary,

Thanks for reaching out, and glad you're enjoying the Hebcal calendar (emojis and all!).

Great news — this is easy to fix! If you subscribe to the calendar using Outlook's "Internet Calendar Subscription" feature, the holidays will appear on a separate calendar layer rather than being added directly to your primary calendar. That means they won't affect your availability or set you as Out of Office.

You can find step-by-step instructions here:

https://www.hebcal.com/home/8/outlook-ics-jewish-holidays

Once you set it up this way, you'll still see all the holidays on your calendar — they just won't interfere with your free/busy status.

If you downloaded a copy of the Hebcal events and merged them into your own calendar, then yes, the major holidays are set as Out of Office (although minor holidays are not). To remove those merged events, follow these instructions:

https://www.hebcal.com/home/58/outlook-csv-delete-hebcal-jewish-calendar

Let me know if you have any further questions!

Glad that this resolved the issue for you. Chag Pesach Sameach!

Thank you for the bug report! We found the cause of the error (an incorrectly CSS which was setting the background color to white and the text to white) and we have fixed it. If you refresh the page it should appear correctly again.

Thank you for the bug report! We found the cause of the error (an incorrectly set background color) and we have fixed it. If you refresh the page it should appear correctly again.

Hi Adam,

Thank you for reaching out! Great news -- you have two options to get just 5787 into Outlook.

Option 1 (Recommended): Internet Calendar Subscription 

The easiest approach is to use Outlook's "Internet Calendar Subscription" feature, which sets up a perpetual calendar feed that stays up to date automatically. It appears as a separate calendar overlay alongside your main calendar and can be managed independently. You can find setup instructions here: https://www.hebcal.com/home/8/outlook-ics-jewish-holidays

Option 2: Download 5787 only

If you'd prefer to manually import just the 5787 events and merge them into your existing calendar:

1. Go to the custom calendar creator at https://www.hebcal.com/hebcal
2. Enter the Hebrew year 5787
3. Click Download, then Outlook
4. Look for the grey "Download 5787 only" button -- this will give you just that single year to import, without re-importing 5786.

Hope that helps! Let us know if you have any other questions.

Unfortunately, Outlook 2019 does not respect or import the CATEGORIES property from iCalendar/ICS feeds.

When Outlook 2019 imports or subscribes to an ICS feed, it essentially ignores the RFC 2445 CATEGORIES field entirely. It does not map those values to Outlook's own Categories system. This is a long-standing limitation — Outlook's category system is proprietary and not wired up to the standard iCalendar CATEGORIES property on import.

So even though Hebcal is doing the right thing by tagging each event with a proper RFC 2445 CATEGORIES value like HOLIDAY or PARSHA, Outlook just drops that metadata on the floor.

Recommended workarounds to get separate colors:

1. Use Outlook on the Web or Microsoft 365 — newer versions have better category support for synced calendars. Outlook's category system requires that category names in the ICS file match pre-existing entries in your Master Category List (MCL). So even if OWA reads the CATEGORIES field from Hebcal's ICS (e.g., HOLIDAY or PARSHA), those values won't map to colored categories unless you have identically named entries already set up in your Outlook category list. If there's no match, the categories are silently dropped.

2. Use separate calendar feeds, each with their own color. For example If you’d like to include the Hebrew date for every day of the year, you can subscribe to that calendar via a separate calendar feed at our Jewish Holiday downloads page. Look for Hebrew calendar dates (English) or Hebrew calendar dates (Hebrew).

Thanks for your message. Has it been more than 48 hours since you made the change on Hebcal.com? If you previously subscribed to the Hebcal calendar via a 3rd party calendar app such as Apple, Google, or Microsoft Outlook, you do not need to resubscribe to the calendar feed. Any changes you make on the Hebcal.com website will automatically be updated in the calendar feed and show up in your 3rd party calendar app, typically about 24 hours after the change is made on the Hebcal.com site.

https://www.hebcal.com/home/632/how-to-make-changes-to-a-yahrzeit-anniversary-calendar

If it's been more than 48 hours and you still don't see the new yahrzeit events showing up on Google calendar, please send a private email message to mradwin@hebcal.com with the iCalendar feed URL (which should look something like https://download.hebcal.com/v3/01gpd9fghmq5hg9y563p14fwfy/personal.ics ) for additional debuggig

We accept some advertisements through Google AdSense. We have configured Google AdSense to block certain categories of advertisements that we feel do not belong on Hebcal.com (“Video Games”, “Alcohol”, “Gambling & Betting”,“Dating”, “Cosmetic Procedures & Body Modification”, among others). We also block advertisements from Christian and Messianic Judaism organizations.

To show your ads specifically on Hebcal.com, you should use a feature in Google Ads called Placement Targeting. Since Hebcal participates in AdSense, it is part of the Google Display Network (GDN), meaning you can "hand-pick" it as a destination for your ads.

Here is the step-by-step process to set this up:

1. Create a Display Campaign

Placement targeting is primarily available for Display Network campaigns.

• Log in to your Google Ads account.
• Click the + button and select New Campaign.
• Choose a goal (like "Website traffic" or "Brand awareness") or select "Create a campaign without a goal's guidance."
• Select Display as your campaign type.

2. Navigate to Content Targeting

Once you are setting up your Ad Group (or editing an existing one):

• Scroll down to the Content section.
• Look for the dropdown or menu labeled Placements.
• Click Add placements.

3. Target hebcal.com

• Select the Enter tab (rather than "Search").
• Type or paste hebcal.com into the box.
• Click Add 1 placement.
• Note: You can also target specific sub-pages if you only want your ads to appear on the "Shabbat Times" or "Yahrzeit" pages by entering the specific URL (e.g., hebcal.com/shabbat).

4. Adjust Targeting Settings ("Targeting" vs. "Observation")

This is a critical step to ensure your ads only show on Hebcal:

• Ensure your setting is set to Targeting.
• If you select "Observation," Google will show ads on Hebcal but also to your specified audience across the entire web. By selecting Targeting, you are restricting the campaign so it only serves ads when a user is on the specific sites you listed.

Important Considerations

• Inventory Competition: Even if you target a site, your ad isn't guaranteed to show every time. You are still competing in an auction against other advertisers. If Hebcal is popular, you may need to increase your CPM (Cost Per Mille) or CPC (Cost Per Click) bid to win the slot.
• Ad Sizes: Hebcal typically uses standard banner sizes. To maximize your chances of appearing, upload your creative in multiple formats, such as:
  • Medium Rectangle: 300 x 250
  • Leaderboard: 728 x 90
  • Wide Skyscraper: 160 x 600
• Traffic Volume: If the specific page you target has low traffic, your ads may not serve many impressions. It is often helpful to target the entire domain (hebcal.com) rather than just one specific URL.

Our yahrzeit and anniversary calendar is not a static calendar. If you create a personal anniversary calendar and then subscribe using our recommended subscription instructions in Google calendar, Outlook, or Apple calendar, you can add new events at a later date. It will take about 24 hours for those new events to show up.

please read the following article for more detail details:

https://www.hebcal.com/home/632/how-to-make-changes-to-a-yahrzeit-anniversary-calendar

Thanks for using Hebcal! To download holidays and candle-lighting times, navigate to https://www.hebcal.com/hebcal and fill out the form with your preferences (including specifying your location in the Candle-lighting & Fast times section of the form).

Calendars created by Hebcal are easily downloaded and imported into various calendar apps, including iPhone, Google Calendar, Outlook PC, Outlook Web, macOS Calendar, and any app that supports iCalendar (.ics) feeds or subscriptions.