Does Microsoft Office have a calendar feature?

Q I used to use Microsoft Works to create word-processing and spreadsheet documents. I also used the Works Calendar to record appointments, birthdays and so on. I could also use this to set alerts to remind me of these dates.

These days I use Microsoft Office (the Home and Student edition). I have tried searching for a simple calendar or appointment function but it doesn’t seem to have one – does it? Can you suggest an alternative?
David Sherwood

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A The Home and Student edition of Office includes only four applications: Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Onenote. None of these include a calendar. Office’s calendar function is found within Outlook, which is included with the Home and Business and Professional editions of Office. So no, you don’t have a calendar tool in your version of Office.

There are countless commercial and free alternatives in existence, many of which have been covered in the pages of Computeractive over the years. Mozilla’s Sunbird – from the same company that makes the popular Firefox web browser – is as good as any. It’s free to download. Alternatively, Sunbird can also be installed as an add-on for Mozilla’s Thunderbird email tool, if you wanted email and calendar integration. In this form it’s called Lightning and it is Mozilla’s recommended method.