The right half of the recurring holidays tab displays the properties of the currently selected holiday and is used to specify the visual attributes of the holiday (name, abbreviation, ...) as well as the rule used to calculate its future dates.

Going from top to bottom, we have the following sections.

Header information

Holiday ID

The Holiday ID is used internally to uniquely identify each recurring holiday. You cannot modify the holiday ID, but it can be useful to have this information when writing macros that deal with holidays functions. The last modified field tells you when this holiday was last modified.

➢Use the holidays changes log to get more information about the details of all past changes to that holiday.

Ancestor ID

The Ancestor ID, if present, tells you from which other recurring holiday the present holiday was copied from originally. If you click on that label, then you will automatically navigate to that ancestor holiday.

➢If you wish to set, change or remove the ancestor of a recurring holiday, right-click on it and select the Link to Ancestor or Remove Ancestor menu item from the recurring holidays popup menu (the current holidays set must itself be linked, to be able to link the current holiday).

Holiday Rule Wizard Button

Use the light bulb button, at the top-right of the recurring holidays details panel, to open the holiday rule wizard, which is used to help you guess what a holiday's recurrence rule is, based on one or more known dates of that holiday.

Full-Text Editor Button

Use the ellipsis button, also located at the top-right of the recurring holidays details panel, to open a multi-line text editor dialog, which can be a convenient way to enter the name of a holiday, when there are multiple name variations for that holiday.

Name and Abbreviations

This is the area where to enter the name of the holiday as it will be displayed by holidays name tokens and the holidays abbreviations tokens.

The name and abbreviations of a holiday can be made variable, allowing you to specify that the name of a holiday and abbreviation should vary depending on the circumstances of each holiday date, such as in the example on the right.

You will find more details in the topics on specifying holiday names, variable names and variable abbreviations.

Graphical Elements

This is the area where one enters the various ways a holiday may be displayed in a graphical manner (eg. symbol, image, watermark, ...), rather than by displaying its name and abbreviations. For more details, see the topic on holidays graphical elements.

Recurrence Rule

This is the area where one specifies the rule that governs the recurrence of a holiday from year to year. For more details, see the topic on holidays recurrence rules.

Rule Description

This area displays a description in plain language, as shown below, of the currently selected holiday's rule as it is specified in the above Recurrence Rule area.

The rule description is updated on the fly, anytime any change is made to any of the settings of the Recurrence Rule area above.

You can copy the text description of any rule displayed in the Rule Description area, by right clicking on the rule, as shown on the right.

Calculated Dates

This area, as shown above, displays the calculated dates of the current holiday for 5 consecutive years, with the calculated dates of the current year and next year highlighted (use the arrows to move the range of calculated dates forward or backward).

These calculated dates are also updated on the fly, anytime any change is made to any of the settings of the Recurrence Rule area above.

Some holidays may occur on more than one date in a given year, in which case dates these multiple occurrences are denoted by dates in bold. Placing cursor over that date, as in the example above, will display all the occurrences of that date in the given Gregorian year.

Deleted Occurrences

Additionally, the effect of any <DELETE> code on the right of a holiday name variation, is shown in the calculated dates preview area at the bottom right of the holidays manager.

In the example, shown on the right, the rule is "December 25 (duplicate Sat on next Mon)(duplicate Sun on next Tue)".

•Normally, such a rule would, at least, generate an occurrence every year on December 25 (as well as on December 26 or 27 depending on the weekday on which December 25 occurs on that year).

•But, the addition of the variation >>>25=<DELETE means that that holiday rule never generates any holiday on December 25, thus only showing the days in lieu occurrences on December 26 or 27.

Note that the effect of the use of any <DELETE> code is reflected only after a non-text change is made to the current rule (thus affecting the Rule Description zone) or after the holiday is saved. The display of calculated dates will not be reflected while text-only changes are made.

Topic 182325, last updated on 30-Mar-2022