Take Control of Outlook Reminders

Outlook not only tracks your appointments and tasks, it can give you reminders of them. These reminders are useful, but you may find yourself changing the settings to match the way you like to do things. If so, you can the default settings that Outlook automatically uses whenever you create a new Appointment (including Meetings) or Task. The following sections show you how to change these default values.

Changing the Default Appointment and Meeting Reminders

By default, Outlook reminds you of Appointments and Meetings 15 minutes before they are scheduled to start. You can change how far ahead of time the default reminders appear, and you can turn them on or off.

To change the defaults for Appointments and Meetings by following these steps:

In any Outlook view, click Tools, then Options to open the Options dialog box.
On the Preferences tabbed page, find the Calendar section

Set default Appointment and Meeting reminders here.
Make sure that the Default reminder checkbox is set if you want to automatically be reminded, and cleared if you don't.
Set how long before the Appointment or Meeting you want the reminder by selecting a default time from the list to the right of the checkbox.
Click OK if you are not going to change the defaults for Tasks, or Apply if you are.

That's all it takes to change the default values for Appointments and Meetings.

Changing the Default Task Reminders

Reminders for Tasks are slightly more complicated than for Appointment and Meeting. By default, all Task reminders appear at the same time of day, on the Due Date of the task, and they only appear if you set a Due Date.

Changing the default Task reminders requires making changes in two places, but it is still easy. Follow these steps to make the changes:

If you are not already there, get to the Preferences tabbed page of the Options dialog box by clicking Tools, then Options, then the Preferences tab.
On the Preferences tabbed page, find the Tasks section.

Set the default Task reminder time here.
Tell Outlook when reminders should appear by setting the Reminder time to the time of day on which you want it to appear.
To control whether they appear at all, click the Options button to the right of the Reminder time. This opens the Task Options dialog box.
In the Task Options dialog box, make sure that the Set reminders on tasks with due dates checkbox is set if you want Task reminders, and cleared if you do not.
Click OK until you return to the Outlook view you started from.

That's it.

Close this window to return to the General Outlook Tips page.