Outlook calendar keyboard shortcuts on a Mac

On a Mac, the Outlook calendar shortcuts use the Command key, not Ctrl. Command+2 opens the calendar, Command+N creates a new appointment, Command+O opens the selected event, Command+T jumps to today, and Command+Option with the Left or Right arrow moves back or forward by a day, a week or a month depending on the view. Most shortcut lists on the web describe Outlook for Windows or Outlook on the web, and those keys do nothing in the Mac app. This page gives the full Mac calendar list as Microsoft publishes it, puts the Windows and web keys next to it for anyone who moves between machines, and shows how to add the one thing the Mac list lacks: keys for switching between Day, Week and Month.

All keys below were checked against Microsoft's support pages on 18 October 2026.

The complete calendar list for Outlook for Mac

Microsoft's page on keyboard shortcuts in Outlook for Mac applies to Outlook for Microsoft 365 for Mac, Outlook 2024 for Mac and Outlook 2021 for Mac. Its calendar section has nine entries.

To do this	Press
Open the calendar view	Command+2
Create a new appointment	Command+N
Open the selected calendar event	Command+O
Delete the calendar event	Delete
Switch the view to include today	Command+T
Previous day, week or month	Command+Option+Left arrow
Next day, week or month	Command+Option+Right arrow
Previous pane in the calendar view	Shift+Control+Left bracket
Next pane in the calendar view	Shift+Control+Right bracket

The arrow pair is the one worth learning first. What it moves by depends on the view: one day in Day view, one week in Week and Work Week, one month in Month. It replaces clicking the small forward and back arrows at the top of the window, which is the most repeated mouse action in a calendar.

Command+N is context sensitive. In the calendar it creates an appointment, and in Mail the same keys create a message. If Command+N opens a new email, focus is still on the mail view.

The pane shortcuts move keyboard focus between the parts of the calendar window, such as the navigation pane and the grid. They matter most for anyone working without a trackpad or with a screen reader.

General shortcuts that also help in the calendar

Several keys in the general sections of the same Microsoft page are useful while the calendar is open.

To do this	Press
Go to Mail	Command+1
Go to Contacts	Command+3
Open the Favorites pane	Command+4
Open settings	Command+Comma
Search the current folder	Option+Command+F
Advanced search	Shift+Command+F
Undo the last action	Command+Z
Redo	Command+Y
Print an item	Command+P
Save an item	Command+S
Close the active window	Command+W
Cycle forward through open windows	Command+Tilde
Cycle backward	Shift+Command+Tilde

Command+Tilde is underrated in the calendar. Opening an event with Command+O puts it in its own window, and with several events open, Command+Tilde moves between them without reaching for the Window menu. Command+W then closes the one in front.

Command+P prints the selected item. For printing a whole week or month, the File menu is still the route.

Why Command+2 may open something other than the calendar

Command+2 is the most quoted Outlook for Mac shortcut and the one most likely to behave differently on another machine. Microsoft attaches a note to the window and dialog section of its list: the number used to switch views depends on the individual configuration of pinned apps.

In practice the numbers count the modules pinned along the side of the Outlook window, in order. With Mail first and Calendar second, Command+2 is the calendar. Unpin or reorder something above the calendar and the number changes with it.

This has two consequences.

First, a shortcut list written for a team should not promise Command+2. It should say "the number of the calendar's position in the side bar", or the team should agree on one pinned order.

Second, rearranging the side bar silently rewrites every number shortcut on that Mac. If Command+2 suddenly opens Contacts, the side bar order is the first thing to check, not the keyboard.

Same task, three versions of Outlook

People who use Outlook for Windows at work and a Mac at home, or who sometimes open Outlook on the web in a browser, run into a different set of keys in each. The table compares the calendar keys as printed in Microsoft's keyboard shortcuts for Outlook page, which covers new Outlook for Windows and Outlook on the web, against the Mac list above.

Task	Outlook for Mac	New Outlook for Windows	Outlook on the web
Open the calendar	Command+2	Ctrl+2	Ctrl+Shift+2
New event	Command+N	Ctrl+N	N
Open selected item	Command+O	Enter	Enter
Go to today	Command+T	Alt+Shift+Y or Home	Alt+Shift+Y
Day view	No shortcut listed	Ctrl+Alt+1	Shift+Alt+1
Work week view	No shortcut listed	Ctrl+Alt+2	Shift+Alt+2
Month view	No shortcut listed	Ctrl+Alt+4 or Alt+Equal	Shift+Alt+4
Three day view	No shortcut listed	Alt+3	No shortcut listed
Next period	Command+Option+Right	Ctrl+Alt+Right	Shift+Right

A few things stand out. Outlook on the web uses a single letter, N, for a new event, so typing in the wrong place can open a form. New Outlook for Windows lists more than one key for some views. Microsoft also notes that the calendar shortcuts in Teams match those in new Outlook for Windows, so a Windows user who learns one set gets both.

The Windows table is also printed for a US keyboard layout. Microsoft states that keys on other layouts might not correspond exactly. The same caution applies to bracket and tilde keys on the Mac, which sit in different places on non-US keyboards.

Adding view switching with macOS App Shortcuts

The Mac list has no keys for Day, Work Week, Week or Month. Windows and the web both have them, which is why guides written from those versions feel more complete.

macOS can attach a shortcut to any menu command an app exposes. Apple describes the process on its page about creating keyboard shortcuts for apps. In Outlook for Mac the views are items in the View menu, according to Microsoft's page on changing the calendar view, which makes them candidates.

1. Choose Apple menu, then System Settings.
2. Click Keyboard in the sidebar, then click Keyboard Shortcuts.
3. Select App Shortcuts, click the add button, and choose Microsoft Outlook from the Application pop-up menu.
4. In Menu title, type the command exactly as it appears, using -> between menu levels. For example, View->Day.
5. Click in Keyboard shortcut, press the key combination, then click Done.
6. Repeat for View->Work Week, View->Week, View->Three Day and View->Month.

A sensible pattern is Control+Option with a number, mirroring the Windows layout: Control+Option+1 for Day, 2 for Work Week, 3 for Week, 4 for Month. Before choosing, check that the combination is not already used elsewhere.

Apple lists the limits plainly. Shortcuts can only be created for existing menu commands, some apps do not allow custom shortcuts, and a shortcut that duplicates an existing one will not work. Test each new shortcut in Outlook right after adding it, with the calendar in front.

Microsoft adds a related warning: settings in some versions of macOS and in some utility apps can conflict with Office shortcuts. If a documented shortcut does nothing, a window manager, a clipboard tool or a launcher that has claimed the same keys is the usual cause.

A keyboard only pass through the week

Put together, the documented keys and a few custom ones are enough to review a week without touching the trackpad. A typical morning check runs like this.

1. Command+2 to bring up the calendar from Mail.
2. Command+T to make sure the view includes today.
3. Command+Option+Right arrow to look at next week, and Command+Option+Left arrow to come back.
4. Shift+Control+Right bracket to move focus from the navigation pane into the grid.
5. Command+O on a selected event to open it in its own window, Command+W to close it again.
6. Command+N to add a new appointment where a gap turned up.
7. Command+1 to return to Mail.

With App Shortcuts added for the views, a step can be added between 2 and 3: switch to Month to see how full the coming weeks are, then back to Work Week for the detail.

Two cautions apply. Delete removes the selected event, so be sure focus is on the event and not on text inside an open window. And Command+Z, which undoes the last action, is the quickest recovery if an event is deleted or moved by mistake.

Legacy Outlook for Mac and the shortcut list

The Mac shortcut page above applies to the current Outlook for Mac. Machines still running legacy Outlook for Mac can show different menus, and some guides describe that older layout.

Microsoft's end of support page for legacy Outlook states that from October 2026 the legacy client stops working against Exchange Online mailboxes, because Exchange Web Services in Exchange Online was set to retire on October 1, 2026. Mailboxes on an organisation's own Exchange servers keep legacy support until October 9, 2029. The switch is the Legacy Outlook toggle inside the app.

On 18 October 2026 the Microsoft Outlook listing on the Mac App Store showed version 16.114 and a requirement of macOS 14.0 or later. Anyone on an older macOS release cannot install that build, which can leave a machine on menus that no longer match current guides.

When the keyboard is not the slow part

Shortcuts remove mouse trips. They do not shorten the event form itself. Command+N opens a blank appointment, and the title, date, start time, end time, location and attendees still have to be filled in one field at a time. For people who create many events a day, that form is where the minutes go.

Some desktop calendars for Mac take a different approach: a system wide hotkey opens a small entry box from any app, and a sentence such as "tomorrow 3pm review with the design team" is turned into an event with the date and time already set. The guide section on entering events shows how that works in one such app, and the full feature list covers the rest of its keyboard set. Whether that suits a given workflow depends on which calendar service it needs to sync with, so check that first.

What to set up first

Learn Command+Option with the arrows and Command+T, since those two cover most calendar movement. Then add App Shortcuts for the views you switch to most, and fix the side bar order so Command+2 stays on the calendar. If event entry is still the bottleneck, look at a keyboard driven desktop calendar such as Caltimate.