Tip 949: Reminders and Tasks in Other Data Files

We had two questions about tasks, reminders, and flags recently. One used wanted to know how to prevent reminders and flags from his archive pst file from displaying while the other user wanted to know how to make the reminders show.

I get a lot of emails and my pst files are very large (12-17GB) with just the email I get during one year. So at the end of each year I make a new file and set that as default. This year I made a new pst file '2012-emails.pst' and set it as default on 1st Jan 2012. My problem: the reminders from my 2011 pst are coming up. They never did this in past years.

Unlike earlier versions of Outlook, Outlook 2007 and up will fire reminders from any data file or folder, not just the default folders in the default pst. Fortunately, you can disable it if you don't want reminders or enable it, if Outlook didn't enable it by default.

This option is available only on data files that are not used for email delivery. When a data file is assigned to an email account (or set as default), reminders and flags will always display.

On data files that are not used for email delivery, you can disable this feature by right-clicking on the top level of the data file and choosing Data File Properties.

Verify the option to "Display reminders and tasks from this folder in the To-Do Bar" is not enabled. Of course, if you want reminders and flags for the folder to display, you'll need this enabled. If you don't see the option, you have email delivered to the data file or it's set as your default data file in File, Account Settings, Data Files tab.