In August and September last year, Microsoft announced that it was going to remove a toggle that let Teams users revert back to the legacy calendar. After receiving backlash, the company apologized for the upcoming changes and excluded it from several special versions of Microsoft 365, including GCC, GCCH, DoD, USSec, and USNat. Unfortunately for those that liked this legacy calendar toggle option, Microsoft is in the process of taking it away, with the rollout taking place from mid-January to the end of the month.
Until now, Microsoft’s new calendar experience has been optional, but with the toggle removal, the new calendar is mandatory, reducing customer choice. The rollout is taking place worldwide and will affect standard commercial tenants, leaving no path to access the legacy calendar.
The benefit of using the legacy calendar was its speed and familiarity. Microsoft has built the new calendar to mirror the new Outlook for Windows which uses a WebView2 architecture to standardize the experience across the web and the app. Now the experience in Teams is standardized too. We have already had Christmas and New Year downtime from work, and now users will be slowed down again as they retrain their muscle memory as to where all the relocated buttons for scheduling, meeting notes, and view switching are.
Not only will employees need to familiarize themselves with the new layout, but it is also likely to obsolete a lot of documentation. Every how-to guide, training video, and onboarding PDF that includes snapshots of the old calendar will now need to be recreated to match the new experience. It is also likely going to drive up IT help desk tickets as users look for their familiar calendar.
One of the main drivers for this change from Microsoft is that the new calendar integrated Copilot and Microsoft Places. For businesses, these features come as paid add-ons so if you work somewhere that doesn’t have these add-ons purchased, you can expect more useless clutter.
Microsoft announced the removal of the toggle via Message ID MC1129730 in the Microsoft Admin Center.
Let us know in the comments if your toggle is gone.