Outlook Event Reminders: What You Can Do (and How to Do It)

Introduction

If you use Microsoft Outlook to manage meetings or appointments, Outlook event reminders (also referred to as notifications) are an essential part of staying on track. But not all versions of Outlook offer the same features. Depending on whether you use Classic Outlook for Windows, the New Outlook for Windows, or Outlook on the Web, the options available to you vary.

This guide explains exactly what reminder and notification settings are available in each version—and what limitations you need to be aware of.

Event Reminders in Classic Outlook

The legacy desktop version (sometimes called “Classic Outlook”) offers the most granular reminder timing options, but is still limited in several important ways.

What You Can Do

• Set one default popup reminder/notification that will apply to every timed (non-all-day) event on your calendar. The notification will popup if Outlook is running at the time of the reminder or the next time Outlook is opened. There are 24 options for your default reminder time that range from 0 minutes to 2 weeks before the event.
• Manually change the reminder of a particular event. If you want a particular event to have a reminder other than your default, you can edit the event to change it.
• Snooze reminders/notifications when they appear. The duration of the snooze is limited to the predefined options (you can only select one at a time):
  
  • snooze for an amount of time that ranges from 5 minutes to 2 weeks (there are 15 different options in that range)
  • be reminded again 0, 5, 10, or 15 minutes before the event starts

What You Can’t Do

• No support schedule multiple reminders per event (have to use the snooze for additional reminders)
• No option to send reminders by email
• Reminders/notifications only work when Outlook is open
• Configure the default reminder for all-day events. The non-configurable default is 18 hours before the event (i.e., at 6am the day before)

Reminders in New Outlook and Outlook on the Web

While New Outlook still lags behind Classic Outlook in many areas, event reminders is one area where it has more functionality than Classic Outlook — with the caveat that it has fewer options for reminder times and snooze durations.

What You Can Do

• Set one default popup reminder/notification that will apply to every timed (non-all-day) event on your calendar (same as classic outlook)
• Manually change the reminder of a particular event. If you want a particular event to have a reminder other than your default, you can edit the event to change it.
• Snooze reminders/notifications when they appear. The duration of the snooze is limited to the predefined options (you can only select one at a time):
  
  • snooze for an amount of time that ranges from 5 minutes to 2 hours (many fewer options than in Classic Outlook)
  • be reminded again 0, 5, 10, or 15 minutes before the event starts
• Get reminders even when Outlook is closed. Unlike Classic Outlook, New Outlook has the ability to generate popup notifications even when Outlook is closed.
• Choose between “Reminder” and “Desktop” notification styles. The reminder style is the same as Classic Outlook, where it is a persistent popup in the center of your screen that only disappears when you close it.  The “Desktop” notification style pops up in the corner of your screen and disappears automatically after a few seconds.
• schedule email reminders on a per-event basis. You can have the email sent to yourself an, optionally, to the other attendees of the meeting.

What You Can’t Do

• Schedule multiple pop-up notifications for an event
• snooze longer than 2 hours
• Set default email reminders (You must manually add them to each event that you want them for)
• Set default notifications only for certain events (the default applies to all events)
• Schedule email reminders to remind only certain attendees (e.g., only those that have accepted or that have not responded)
• Configure the default reminder for all-day events. The non-configurable default is 5:00pm. the day before the event (possibly better than the 6am reminder for Classic Outlook, but still somewhat arbitrary)

Limitations Across All Versions of Outlook

Outlook event reminders have some limitations that are consistent across all versions of Outlook:

• Only one popup reminder/notification per event — snooze is the only way to get additional popup notifications.
• No rules / conditional logic for your which events should get your default reminder
  
  • the default reminder you set applies to all of your timed events
  • the built-in default reminder for all-day events applies to all your all-day events.
• No rules / conditional logic for sending email reminders only to some attendees or to non-attendees
• No ability to send reminders via other channels such as SMS, phone call or Teams Chat

If you need more flexibility, automation, or delivery channels—you’ll need to go beyond what Outlook offers.

A More Powerful Option: Timelier

Timelier.com integrates directly with your Outlook calendar and gives you full control over how and when reminders are sent.

Feature	Classic Outlook	New & Web Outlook	Timelier
Multiple automated reminders
Reminder emails		(limited)	(customizable)
SMS / phone reminders
Remind attendees		(per-event)	(automated)
Remind non-attendees
Rule-based reminders
SMS Reminders
Teams Chat Reminders

Conclusion

While New Outlook’s addition of email reminders is a great improvement over Classic Outlook, Outlook event reminders/notifications are still limited in many respects and require a lot of manual intervention to meet the needs of many users. 

With Timelier, you can take control of your reminders and ensure you and other attendees are on time for every meeting.

→ Learn more about how to automate reminders with Timelier