Outlook is losing a big Internet calendar subscription feature, say reports

New features are born, and old features are culled.

What you need to know

• Outlook has given users the ability to subscribe to external calendars and stay up to date via synchronized online calendar perusing.
• The ability to subscribe to external calendars and stay synced appears to be disappearing, according to multiple user reports.
• A Microsoft support thread confirmed the feature is being depreciated.

If you're a big fan of Outlook's online, external calendar subscription feature that enables you to stay effortlessly synchronized with someone else's calendar, bad news: You'll now have to settle for calendar importation, as subscribing's best days are over.

This development came to light as a result of multiple Microsoft Community posts reporting that calendar subscriptions were no longer working as intended, which were spotted by Dirk Hoffman (via WinFuture). Across the posts, one managed to net an actual confirmation from a Microsoft agent. It goes as follows: "It has been confirmed that the calendar can no longer be subscribed. At this point, we would recommend that you import the calendar as follows instead."

The Microsoft agent then outlined how to import a calendar, which, as one can imagine, is not what the affected users in the forum cared about.

English language Microsoft forums report the same situation, signaling that Microsoft appears to have given the subscription feature the depreciation treatment.

There's no statement on why this is happening, and outside of a Microsoft agent's confirmation, there aren't any official blog posts or news blasts indicating that it is happening in the first place, though lots of user reports are bringing that fact to light in the meantime. Whether the situation is all a big misunderstanding or something equally peculiar that results in the feature being properly re-implemented remains to be seen, but based on the currently available information, it appears Outlook calendar subscribers are out of luck.