Unreliable Outlook Reminders

[jfathman]

Hello,

A few users of my Add-In are reporting that their Outlook Reminders are
sometimes unreliable. The individual Reminders do not appear when
scheduled, and then all appear (expired) in a batch for the first time
when Outlook is next launched.

My Add-In does not interact with the Calendar or Reminders in any way,
so I do not believe there is any relationship between this problem and
my Add-In.

I reviewed postings in microsoft.outlook.public.calendaring, and I see
many Outlook users (who certainly do not use my Add-In) complaining of
similar problems where Reminders become unreliable, and show up late
when Outlook is next launched.

The are repeated recommendations in the Calendaring newsgroup to run
Outlook.exe with (variously) the resetfolders, cleanreminders, and/or
cleanfreebusy options to correct this problem. A few users report that
this corrected their problem, others report that it corrected their
problem for a while and then Reminders became unreliable again, and
others report that it made no difference.

I see in the Calendars newsgroup (again and again) that when running
Outlook.exe with the options above does not correct the problem, there
is no advice for what to try next.

Do any of you know something concrete about this problem? Is this a
known problem in Outlook? Should I recommend that my Add-In users try
the Outlook.exe fix-it options above? Is there something worthwhile to
try after that if it doesn't help?

Even if this is an Outlook problem, unrelated to my Add-In, I am
reluctant to advise my users to try the Outlook.exe options if there is
any potential to hose their systems with little real chance of success
restoring their Reminders to reliable operation.

As always, thanks for the valuable advice I receive in this newsgroup.
Jim

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

Most often when those switches fail it's due to some synching software. Some
such software seems to replicate the hidden Reminders folder so you end up
with Reminders, Reminders1, etc. and that confuses Outlook and seems to slow
down the handling of the MAPI restrictions on the Reminders folder. Nothing
we can do about that except to tell the user to use a later version of the
software or different synching software.

The reminders are fired about once a minute from the results of the MAPI
restriction on the Reminders folder, which searches Inbox, Calendar, Tasks
and Contacts. If your code is running a process that takes a long time then
it could affect Outlook's handling of reminders and when they fire since a
COM addin is running in-process with Outlook.

 

[jfathman]

Ken,

My Add-In iterates through the Inbox at startup. On a slow machine
with an excessive number of items in the Inbox, this can take more than
a full minute.

If my Add-In is still iterating through the Inbox when the per-minute
Outlook processing of reminders occurs, would you think this would just
delay presentation of reminders (acceptable) or prevent it until the
next Outlook launch?

Thanks.

Jim

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

I would think it would just delay it until the next 1-minute cycle.

If you comment out the startup code that iterates the Inbox does it
eliminate the reminders problem?

 

[jfathman]

Ken,

It is a little tricky to try not running the Inbox iteration, because
field reports are that the reminders are only occasionally unreliable
-- so it is hard to make the call that running with or without Inbox
iteration is the determining factor. If only I could reproduce the
reported behavior on my bench...

I think I will suggest (1) back up PST/etc. files; (2) update PDA synch
software, if any; (3) run outlook.exe with the fix-it switches; (4) see
if reminder reliability improves; (5) if it doesn't, disable the Add-In
and see if that *seems* to make a difference over time.

It's squishy, but I guess that just means the easy problems have all
been solved.

Thanks again for your advice.

Jim