With the holidays approaching and with what seems like everyone taking the last week of the year off, it's a good time to review Outlook's reminder settings.
There are several different methods you can use to disable reminders, depending on what your goal is.
Do you want to stop adding reminders to new appointments and meetings?
If so, you can turn reminders off in Outlook 2010 and newer's File, Options, Calendar dialog. In older versions, this setting is on the Tools, Options, Preferences tab.
Do you want to stop current reminders from firing and erase all past due reminders?
Stop displaying reminders by changing the setting in File, Options, Advanced, Show reminders. In older versions, look in Tools, Options, Other, Advanced, Reminder Options, Display the Reminder.
Use this to quickly disable a bunch of older reminders, such as when returning from vacations. While its off, all reminders that come due are dismissed. Future reminders will work once it’s turned back on.
Do you want to disable reminders for some appointments or all day events, but not others?
Use VBA to set or remove reminders based on predetermined conditions. Get the VBA code at How to Remove Reminders on All Day Events.
Do you want to prevent upcoming recurring tasks from firing reminders?
Mark the task complete. You can do this in the Simple list view in the last folder – click in the Completed column to mark tasks complete.
Published December 18, 2012. Last updated on January 17, 2018.