In a Channel 9 conversation, user Dr. Herbie expressed his long-standing desire to see his Outlook calendar as a desktop wallpaper. This, I admit, has never once occured to me. The nice thing about it is that it's so amazingly simple to implement.

Ever since Windows 98 and the Active Desktop, you could use HTML as the desktop wallpaper and embed anything you want in it. For the last 4 versions at least, Outlook comes with an ActiveX control that lets you display the contents of any Outlook folder in your application. Mix the two - and you have an HTML page that embeds the Outlook View Control maximized to fullscreen, defaulting to today's date, and add two simple Javascript buttons to move back and forward in the days.

A less lazy developer can make this much nicer, with a monthly date-picker and less ugly buttons. Considered as as Proof of Concept, it works with some caveats:

1) Due to the whole Eolas/ActiveX lawsuit fiasco, you need to click on the desktop once to enable interaction with the ActiveX control.

2) You can click on desktop icons, but you can't drag them around (well, without dragging them into an appointment. :). This can be fixed by resizing the control to allow some free desktop space, I suppose.

3) This keeps an instance of Outlook permanently in memory. Probably isn't a problem, but good to know.

4) As it stands, the control will mirror the view current selected in your Outlook calendar.

Here's a screenshot of my desktop right now. Thanks for the idea, Herbie!

TO INSTALL:

Download the specified attachment (CalendarWallpaper.zip) and unzip into any convenient place. My Documents, for instance.

Then, Go to your desktop properties -> Desktop -> Browse and choose the unzipped file (CalendarWallpaper.htm). Et voila!

13 Comments

• Ryan Anderson said Thursday, February 1, 2007 8:28:47 PM

  That is just beautifully simplistic!

• jayson knight said Thursday, February 1, 2007 11:05:31 PM

  Got enough stuff running in your systray? :-P

• Torey G said Friday, February 9, 2007 10:08:31 PM

  This was great information. I have been trying to do this for about 6 months. Extremely easy to do and unbelievably helpful.

• javier said Tuesday, November 13, 2007 9:53:51 AM

  This is a great job !! how could be change the calendar´s user ?? I mean, I would like some users to share the same calendar.

• Carol S. said Thursday, February 14, 2008 3:33:56 PM

  I would like to know how to modify this code to use a Public Folders calendar for a group web page.

• Angi said Thursday, April 2, 2009 2:19:42 PM

  Im speachless!... how simple & great is this :o)

• Dudi said Sunday, July 12, 2009 8:59:46 AM

  Thanks!! work grate.

• anon said Thursday, July 1, 2010 5:13:36 PM

  I'm runing Win 7 and it only allows me to choose a picture as my desktop background. I'm in the "Personalization > Desktop Background" menu.

• anon said Thursday, July 1, 2010 5:28:24 PM

  After further research, I found out that Windows7 no longer supports active desktop, so this html file will not work.

• Big C said Wednesday, September 8, 2010 7:27:35 AM

  Fantastic!! Thank you. Is there a way of getting my Outlook Today page shown on my desktop instead?

• weblogs.asp.net said Sunday, April 17, 2011 12:52:43 AM

  Outlook calendar as your windows desktop.. Nifty :)

• weblogs.asp.net said Wednesday, May 4, 2011 1:03:25 PM

  Outlook calendar as your windows desktop.. Awesome :)

• weblogs.asp.net said Friday, June 17, 2011 9:36:59 PM

  Outlook calendar as your windows desktop.. Bang-up :)