I am a Macintosh support consultant. One of my customers with about 30 Macs has an issue where the Microsoft Outlook calendar widget does not show up in the Notification Center Widget Gallery. This issue affects only three computers. The computers themselves are brand new running macOS Sonoma (14.2.1). However, they contain software and data that has been migrated from multiple older Macs and gone through multiple macOS upgrades over many years.
Mac Studio (2022)
I created this topic so I could post the solution I discovered. There may be other solutions but mine does the trick.
SOLUTION
To trigger the Outlook Calendar widget to appear in the Notification Center Widget Gallery I had to download/install the free Outlook app from the App Store. I may or may not have launched the app (I can't remember) but either way the Outlook widget was available in the Widget Gallery.
NOTES
As a precaution I first duplicated the original Outlook app (naming it Outlook copy) since this was installed using the official Microsoft Office installer. Then after downloading the free Outlook from the App Store and checking that the widget showed up, I deleted the Outlook app and renamed the Outlook copy back to its original name. I recommend doing these extra steps since I don't know if the App Store version of Outlook is different; also, the App Store version was tied to my Apple ID and I did not want that to cause some future issue.
I created this topic so I could post the solution I discovered. There may be other solutions but mine does the trick.
SOLUTION
To trigger the Outlook Calendar widget to appear in the Notification Center Widget Gallery I had to download/install the free Outlook app from the App Store. I may or may not have launched the app (I can't remember) but either way the Outlook widget was available in the Widget Gallery.
NOTES
As a precaution I first duplicated the original Outlook app (naming it Outlook copy) since this was installed using the official Microsoft Office installer. Then after downloading the free Outlook from the App Store and checking that the widget showed up, I deleted the Outlook app and renamed the Outlook copy back to its original name. I recommend doing these extra steps since I don't know if the App Store version of Outlook is different; also, the App Store version was tied to my Apple ID and I did not want that to cause some future issue.
After my original post I discovered that my solution did not always work. I was successful in 4 of 6 cases. I haven't found a better solution (other than possibly wiping a drive and re-installing fresh, which I have not tried).
Since the only issues I have encountered involved workstations that have been migrated or updated from much earlier versions of Office, I suspect there is some older Microsoft component that is preventing the Outlook calendar widget from being recognized by macOS. I am unfamiliar with the macOS widgets mechanism to know where to look next.
POSSIBLE LEAD
I do have one suspicion based on an Adobe issue I resolved a few months ago. Apple removed something from macOS that converts plist files from the older format to the newer. I resolved an Adobe issue by identifying an old Adobe plist file that the Acrobat installer was attempting to convert but failed (which I noticed in the Acrobat installer log). Once I deleted the old plist file, the installer copied a new plist file instead of trying to convert the existing one. I can't help but wonder if the same issue is happening with regard to the Microsoft Office installer trying and failing to convert an old plist file which is related to the Outlook widget.
I have exactly the same issue and came here via google search, having tried for many months to resolve it. I actually have two Macs in daily use (a desktop Mini M2 Pro and a Macbook Pro M3 Max). Prior to the Macbook I had a Macbook Air M2, and it DID show on that Mac only. When I upgraded to the Pro and transferred my user account, it disappeared.
I've since logged with Microsoft and they advised after much logging and back and forth, that they feel it's a MacOS issue and to raise with Apple. Having now logged with Apple, the best they can suggest is to reinstall the Mac!
I've also tried your approach of installing Outlook from the App Store, but sadly this didn't work for me.
In the interim I can of course use the widget 'from iPhone' but this is suboptimal as it doesn't update very frequently and sometimes forces opening the iPhone app to resume updating at all.
Outlook Widget Missing
