OL98: Behavior of the 'Appointment Reminder' Check Box (301655)

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If the appointment date and time is in the past, the Reminder check box is not selected by default. If the appointment date and time is in the future, the Reminder check box is selected by default. This behavior is a design feature of Microsoft Outlook; there is not a user interface to change this behavior.

Outlook assumes that you do not need a reminder for past appointments and that you do need a reminder for future appointments. When you open your calendar in Outlook, the cursor must be focused somewhere. The first time that is marked as working hours on the calendar is the default focus point for the Outlook calendar. You can define working hours in Outlook by clicking Options on the Tools menu, clicking Calendar Options, and then defining the workday Start and Stop times in the Calendar Work Week section.

If you open your calendar and click Actions, and then click New Appointment, to create a new appointment without first selecting the desired time on the calendar, a new appointment form appears that has the appointment time occurring in the past. Therefore, the Reminder check box is not selected by default.

If you open your calendar, click an available time space in the calendar, click Actions, and then click New Appointment, the Reminder check box is selected by default.

If you create a custom form that has the Reminder check box either selected or cleared, publish the custom form in your Forms folder, and assign the custom form as your new default appointment form, the Reminder check box reverts to the default behavior.

If you create a custom form that has the Reminder check box selected or cleared, and you publish the form in your Calendar folder, you can override the default Reminder check box behavior. This form becomes available on the Calendar menu and is not the default form. The drawback of this method is that the appointment date and time defaults to the time that was in the form when you published it.

For additional information about custom forms and solutions in Outlook 98, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: