A Simple Solution to Try When Outlook Reminder Not Working

Outlook is one of the most widely used email management applications. It has lots of simple and unique features which makes it the goto application for accessing emails and performing many daily tasks. A few of these features are Tasks, Calendar, Archive, Conversations and a wide range of add-ins. In addition to other features, we all rely on Reminders in Outlook for many purposes. We are so dependent on an early reminder for a meeting, quick accessibility to the meeting invite through a pop-up feature, clicking on the pop-up to open the invite and then find the link of the Skype meeting, Teams meeting etc. All these actions are dependent on accurate working of the Reminder feature. If there is one miss or glitch anywhere, it can lead us to missing important meetings.

Reasons for Outlook Reminders might not be Working

There have been instances when the reminder feature has not worked as expected for several users. The issue reported is that the users stop receiving notifications or reminders for their meetings or tasks. Any version of Outlook can face this issue.

The issue can occur due to various reasons.

• You may not receive notification for a meeting if you had clicked on Dismiss All instead of Dismiss to hide a meeting notification.
• It can be due to any recent software update.
• It can be due to a corrupt Outlook profile.
• Show reminders option might be turned off.
• Setting delivery location as ‘None’.
• The reminders are not set on the primary folder in your Outlook.

Some of the reasons are simple and don’t need much troubleshooting such as clicking on ‘Dismiss’ instead of ‘Dismiss All’ unless you really want to dismiss all the meetings in the pop-up notification window. However, there are a few issues that need to be checked in detail.

Firstly, you need to make sure that the Reminder notifications are turned on for your Outlook. Different versions of Outlook have slightly different ways for this feature. We’ll go through the required steps for Outlook 2016, Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2007 versions. If you are using an older version of Outlook, it is recommended to upgrade to the later versions.

How to enable reminders in Outlook 2016?

1. Start with clicking on the File tab.



2. Click on the Options on the left side of the screen.



3. In Outlook Options select Advanced; in Reminders section, check the box ‘Show Reminders.’ Add the sound if required and click on Ok.

How to enable reminders in Outlook 2010?

1. Open Outlook 2010 and click on File button on the top.



2. Select Options from the list on the left-hand side of the screen.



3. Now in Outlook Options dialogue box go to Calendar.



4. Look for Show bell icon on the calendar for appointments and meetings with reminders and check the box next to it.



5. Click on OK to proceed. Now, check your Bell icon is visible again.

How to enable reminders in Outlook 2007?

1. Open Outlook 2007 and start with clicking on File button.
2. Now, click on New button and select Appointment.
3. Now, double click and open an Appointment.
4. Go to the Options menu in the Appointment tab.
5. There you will see a Reminder list; select the time slot suitable to you.

Restart your Outlook after enabling reminders and check if the issues persist. If it does, please follow the next step.

Clear Reminders

It may be possible that the reminders are enabled but the reminders folder itself is corrupt. In this case, we need to clean and reset the reminders folder.

Please follow below steps:

1. Close the Outlook application.
2. Press Win+R on the keyboard to open the dialog box for ‘Run’.
3. Once the Run window opens, next to the ‘Open’ field, type the command -

outlook /cleanreminders

4. Press Enter or click on OK.

Start the Outlook application and check if the issue is fixed.

Create a new Outlook profile

There are chances that your Outlook profile is corrupt which is causing this issue. Please follow below steps to create a new Outlook profile.

1. Open Outlook.
2. Click on File, then on Account Settings.
3. Now click on Manage Profiles.
4. Choose the Show Profiles option and click on the Add button.
5. A new box will appear. Input a name for the new profile in the Profile Name box and then click on OK.

This will create a new profile. Please restart your Outlook application and check if the issue is now fixed.

How to avoid any such happenings?

If you want to avoid any such happening in the future, then there is not any specific procedure available to achieve that. But yes, keeping a few important things in mind may help you to handle such situations – keep checking and verifying all your reminders in the primary folder, or executing ‘outlook/cleanremainders’ in the ‘run’ box (after closing Outlook). Apart from these issues, Outlook users may face a lot of issues like PST file corruption. PST plays an important role, and any sort of corruption in PST may lead to the many known or unknown Outlook related issues. These issues may be reminder is not popping up, getting error codes and messages, the certain folder isn’t opening, the default flag time for messages is late, so on and so forth. So, it is always suggested that you use a third-party tool like Kernel for Outlook PST Repair tool to repair the corrupt PST file.

Final Words:

As we discussed in the blog, ‘Outlook Reminder Not Working’ is a common issue for many Outlook users. We have discussed a few ways to fix it. Other than this issue, many Outlook users are troubled by PST corruption issues. And there is no better way to repair a corrupted PST than using a third-party tool. Kernel for Outlook PST Repair tool not only repairs but also saves PST to different other formats and export it to various mail servers. The software comes with a trial version and can be tried and tested for free.