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In Windows 11, First day of week is a regional-format preference for the weekday that calendar layouts use as their starting point when they honor that setting. It does not change dates, define your workdays, or set a work schedule. Calendar apps such as Outlook can have their own separate first-day settings.

What the Windows setting changes

The setting determines the weekday shown at the start of a calendar week in views that follow Windows’ regional calendar preference. Windows uses regionalized date and time formats, which can vary with the user profile’s language and locale; Microsoft explains this behavior in its date, time, and number format guidance.

The setting is about calendar presentation. It does not move an appointment to another date, add or remove workdays, or specify when you work. Microsoft’s Windows documentation describes the taskbar calendar as an access point, but does not enumerate every Windows view or third-party app that follows the regional first-day preference. Therefore, a particular calendar view may have its own setting instead.

How to change it in Windows 11

The following Settings route is documented by iTechGuides; Microsoft’s reviewed Windows pages do not reproduce this exact sequence.

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  1. Open Settings.
  2. Select Time & language, then Language & region.
  3. Expand Regional format.
  4. Select Change formats.
  5. Choose a day from First day of week.

See iTechGuides’ Windows 11 instructions for the setting’s documented route. Windows regional formatting is also described in Microsoft Learn.

Why a calendar may still start on a different day

Changing Windows’ regional format does not necessarily override a calendar application’s independent preference. Outlook provides its own first-day controls, so check the setting in the app if its calendar still starts on an unexpected day.

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Outlook on the web

In Outlook on the web, the selected first day appears at the beginning of Week view, according to Microsoft’s calendar settings guidance.

New Outlook and classic Outlook

Microsoft’s Outlook instructions also put first-day-of-week preferences in Outlook’s own calendar options for its desktop versions. The exact controls depend on the Outlook version; see Microsoft’s instructions for the first day and workdays.

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Keep week start, work schedule, and week numbers separate

These are different calendar choices, even when they appear near one another in an app’s settings.

  • First day of the week: the weekday a calendar week begins with in a view that follows the relevant preference.
  • Workdays and working hours: the days and hours marked as your working schedule. Outlook configures these separately; its classic options describe Monday–Friday and 9 A.M.–5 P.M. as defaults, while Sunday is its default first day. Those are Outlook defaults, not universal Windows defaults.
  • Week numbering: the rule used to number weeks. Outlook on the web separately offers options based on the first day of the year, the first four-day week, or the first full week. These rules are not set by Windows’ regional first-day preference.

Microsoft documents Outlook’s web calendar choices in Calendar settings in Outlook on the web and its desktop workday and week-start controls in Set the first day of the calendar week and change calendar work days. For taskbar calendar access and Windows date/time display settings, see Microsoft’s Windows time, date, and time zone guidance and Outlook calendar view instructions.

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