Tip 1007: Next Week flag reminder time bug?

A question came up about a bug in Outlook 2010's Next week flag. An article at Office Online says the reminder on Next Week flags is the first day of the work week. But the user noticed his reminder was set for the last day of the work week. He wanted to know if the article was wrong or if this was a bug.

When I tested it, the behavior in the article was correct: when I right clicked on the Flag field and choose Add Reminder, it was set for Monday, the first day of my work week.

I don't have reminders enabled for tasks with due dates, so I enabled that option and sure enough, the user was correct: the default reminder was the last day of the work week.

To automatically set reminders on Tasks and Flagged messages with have due dates, go to File, Options, Tasks in Outlook 2010 and up or Tools, Options, Task Options in Outlook 2007 and older.

I checked the behavior in three versions of Outlook and it is consistent. I feel confident that this is the behavior in all Outlook versions since very little changed with flag reminder feature over the years.

Clearly, the article is only half-correct, but I'm not sure if the behavior is a bug or by design, or which behavior should be the correct behavior.

If I am setting automatic reminders, when do I want the reminder for a week-long task, or for any task, for that matter? Do I want the reminder on the start date or on the due date?

If I'm setting reminders manually as needed, should it default to the due date or use the start date as default? The developers picked the start date.

Knowing how I work, I'd want the reminder on or right before the due date, not 5 days in advance. I'm highly likely to put it off and unless I snooze the reminder for 5 days, I won't be reminded when I'm down to the wire and need to actually finish the task. For this reason, I agree with the behavior when the reminder is set automatically on the due date. Is using the start date as default wrong for manual reminders? I think so…

Published July 11, 2012. Last updated on July 11, 2012.