A Calendar control can be used on its own, or as a drop-down part of a DatePicker control. For more information, see DatePicker. A Calendar displays either the days of a month, the months of a year, or the years of a decade, depending on the value of the DisplayMode property. When displaying the days of a month, the user can select a date, a range of dates, or multiple ranges of dates. The kinds of selections that are allowed are controlled by the SelectionMode property.

The range of dates displayed is governed by the DisplayDateStart and DisplayDateEnd properties. If DisplayMode is Year or Decade, only months or years that contain displayable dates will be displayed. Setting the displayable range to a range that does not include the current DisplayDate will throw an ArgumentOutOfRangeException.

The BlackoutDates property can be used to specify dates that cannot be selected. These dates will be displayed as dimmed and disabled.

By default, Today is highlighted. This can be disabled by setting IsTodayHighlighted to false.

The Calendar control provides basic navigation using either the mouse or keyboard. The following table summarizes keyboard navigation. Key Combination DisplayMode Action ARROW Any Change focused date, unselect all selected dates, and select new focused date. SHIFT+ARROW Any If SelectionMode is not set to SingleDate or None begin selecting a range of dates. CTRL+UP ARROW Any Switch to the next larger DisplayMode. If DisplayMode is already Decade, no action. CTRL+DOWN ARROW Any Switch to the next smaller DisplayMode. If DisplayMode is already Month, no action. SPACEBAR Month Select focused date. SPACEBAR Year or Decade Switch DisplayMode to the Month or Year represented by focused item.

XAML Usage for Classes Derived from Calendar If you define a class that derives from Calendar, the class can be used as an object element in XAML, and all of the inherited properties and events that show a XAML usage in the reference for the Calendar members can have the same XAML usage for the derived class. However, the object element itself must have a different prefix mapping than the controls: mapping shown in the usages, because the derived class comes from an assembly and namespace that you create and define. You must define your own prefix mapping to an XML namespace to use the class as an object element in XAML.