Outlook default reminders, 18 hour madness

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Microsoft in their infinite wisdom have two defaults for reminders on meeting requests, one is for appointments and one for all day events. The option in Tools -> Options is for appointments/meetings only and the defaults for all day events is hardcoded to 18 hours and can’t be changed. Now depending on how you create the appointment and which view you are in will depend on which default you get.

If you are in month view and click on a date it will use the all day default (hardcoded to 18 hours) even if it is not an all day event! If you click the new button or are in week or day view it will use the meeting/appointment default (whatever you set in the options).

Madness!

10 thoughts on “Outlook default reminders, 18 hour madness”

  1. I HATE THIS BUG! It drives me nuts, why would I want an 18 reminder for a 30 minute appointment just because I decided to use the calendar month view! I use that view all the time, and have created so many needless ‘day before’ reminders. I hate you microsoft.

  2. The best part is when you have to explain it to people and they look at you as if you are nuts and then ask, “but why would they make it do that?”…

  3. I hate this with a passion because I have my phone synced to Outlook, so the alarm goes at 0600 to tell me about an all day event tomorrow. No making me happy.

  5. I can’t believe this isn’t configurable. So many times Microsoft do 95% of a good job but then stuff it up on the last 5%.

  6. I don’t know if this will solve the same issue, but I found that if its a recurring event you right click on the event in your calendar and mouse over open and choose open series then in the options section there is a little reminder drop down that lets you choose when you get a reminder for that particular event! If its a single event and not recurring you can just right click on the event and click open and then open occurrance and everything else is the same after from there on!

    good luck and I hope this helps you!

  7. Same here.. I use the calendar very often and each time I put something in it, I need to remind myself to undo that 18 hours thing. Almost everyone uses the monthly view most of the time. This is absolutely crazy. I wonder if M$ ever gets to know about these comments.

  8. Windows Phone calendar has the same bugs and even more: there is not even an option to make a reasonable reminder for an all-day event. Only around midnight, 24 hours before, etc etc.

    But now I switched to Android, and Lo and behold
    the same crap here. In my Google calendar, all-day events have a default reminder 23:30.

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