Suddenly black grid lines in calendar view. How to revert that change?

[Daniel Niccoli]

I couldn't have phrased it better, so I just steal what someone else wrote about that:

"My Outlook calendar appearance has suddenly changed overnight, from a clean, white appearance to grey with grid lines. I've tried all of the usual settings in calendar options to change the appearance back to the previous one but to no avail.

Does anyone know how to revert to the cleaner view? This new look is untidy and distracting."

Source: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/outlook-calendar-appearance/e50b22dd-f22a-4f4...

Posting it here, because there is no answer at answers.microsoft.com, (as is tradition).

Changing the color theme does not work. It just shifts the colors around.

The biggest issues I have with this view is that it's a visual mess, hard to read and distracting. And that the fine line showing you the current time is gone completely.

[#2]

@Daniel Niccoli Yeah mate. I'm fricken struggling with the new view. Hope we can find a way to revert!

[#3]

@Daniel Niccoli 

Die dunklen Linien sind sehr unübersichtlich und verwirren die Übersicht. Bitte unbedingt eine Möglichkeit geben das wieder zu ändern.

Translate by google:

The dark lines are very confusing and confuse the overview. Please give an opportunity to change that again.

[#4]

@Daniel Niccoli Yup, same here.  Also the name and day of week heading fonts got larger and bolded and the "live line" was changed to a black half circle

[#5]

@Daniel Niccoli You are talking about the half hour lines? It's the "new improved outlook"... You'll have them for all of the time scales for the minutes. The lines do look darker in your theme than in the colorful theme. 

There is also a dotted line that goes around some appointments - here, its on meetings added to me calendar that i have not responded to but I had one user who had it on appointments on a shared calendar. 

Also new is the dot that extends over the previous dates. 

I didn't find a suggestion about the grid lines at uservoice - you can leave a suggestion for it. (There are a couple of the dot that shows the current hour.) 

https://outlook.uservoice.com/forums/322590-outlook-2016-for-windows

[#6]

Thanks @Diane Poremsky 

I raised one on Monday, but it's still pending moderator approval.

Not sure if this remains the link when it's approved, but this is the current one:

https://outlook.uservoice.com/forums/322590-outlook-for-windows-desktop-application/suggestions/4055...

[#7]

@Daniel Niccoli This!  It is driving me crazy.  I hate this world of automatic changes.  Microsoft, PLEASE STOP HELPING ME!  I can't find if it can be reverted.  Ultimate first world problen I fully realize.

[#8]

@ woke up this morning to this HORRIBLE calendar too. So now, I my options are to switch to colourfull view and burn my eyes staring at the bright white screen when working on emails (super tiring even with the night light mode on), or spend twice as much time identifying what it happening in my calendar to schedule my days.... Plus all my coloured categories are messed up too, with colours way to similar to one another to stand out... Unreal :( 

[#9]

I have just had this happen when I logged in this morning. And its 20th Jan 2021! Why it seemingly randomly decides to update like this is beyond me. And from what I can see from UserVoice, it's not been picked up at all so zero help from MS.

The new view is horrible. I've had to go for Dark View which isn't great but its better than the new default.

[#10]

This issue appeared for me this week and it doesn't appear to have any resolution?  Themes don't play any role in this other than changing how pronounced the grid lines are appearing in the view.

I can't believe this was included in an update without any option to turn it off and revert to the old calendar setting.  I sent feedback within Outlook, hopefully MS will have an answer soon.

[#11]

@mroman2250 I'm glad I'm not alone on this. What I don't understand is I cannot find where the update happened. Also, as I'm on my company's AD, I would have assumed it was a company wide update but so far, I don't know anyone else who has had this.

[#12]

@RichMillyard I checked with another user on my team and the same issue happened.  Seems like MS sent out this in the update without an option to revert.  Hopefully they get enough complaints.  
I seem to have remembered this happening one time in the past as well and it going back to the previous view.  Maybe we just need to wait?

[#13]

@Daniel Niccoli  Same thing here and I have tried every setting.  It changed on my personal 365 outlook but not on my work 365 outlook.  Now they look differet.  Looking at them side by side it looks soooooooo much better on my work outlook.  Another difference for me too is the tabs are square on the new one vs slightly angled along with some other (less appealing changes)

[#14]

This is terrible. Horrible update; want and need my old calendar back!!

[#15]

I'm also frustrated by the heavy line weight in the calendar. What is interesting is that it's only for my Microsoft 365 Outlook, if I view using Office 2019 version then the calendar doesn't have the over-powering grid. I agree with everyone that it's too much visual noise, and switching to the colorful or white color option is way too bright (I use the dark gray theme).

[#16]

@amyburns455 

Have you tried using the "View Settings" from the email page of Outlook.  I was able to modify mine using "Grid line style" value set to no grid lines.  Once I touched that, the gridlines throughout office were impacted.

[#17]

@datamonkey It's not changing the calendar view for me unfortunately. Thanks for the suggestion thought! I keep hoping.... 

[#18]

@N3rdy590 The black lines are part of the new design and are here to stay, until they change it again., Use the Help > Feedback option to comment on it. 

[#19]

@datamonkey unfortunately I didn't have this option in my version, so wasn't able to change the settings for grid lines. I appreciate the suggestion!

[#20]

The grid lines option only applies to the message list - if you use a list view of the calendar, the grid lines will be removed. But not in Day/week views.