Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Outlook "Cannot turn off the reminder" error

Had a user with the following error in Outlook: "Cannot turn off the reminder. You may be reminded again. Could not complete the operation"

Also if you try to open the appointment you get an error as well.

The reminder for the meeting keeps poping up over and over again.
Tried closing Outlook and typing on the run line (in windows go to Start menu and select Run):
outlook /cleanfreebusy
(The above command opens Outlook and cleans the free/busy information)
closed Outlook and opened Outlook again from the run line:
outlook /cleanreminders
(The above command opens Outlook and cleans the reminders)
This has worked for me in the past but not this time.

I was finally able to fix the problem by deleting the corrupted meeting with the following procedure:
When the reminder pops up make note of the meeting date and time .
Select the Calender folder
Change the view to "By Category" see below for Outlook 2003.






This is how you change to "By Category" view in Outolook 2000

Sort Category view by start date and locate the problem meeting and delete it.

You may get an error saying that the meeting was not deleted properly but at least it is gone.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks. This was driving me a little crazy. Not the simplest fix in the world, but did the trick.

Anonymous said...

Thank you. Great instructions for an error that will drive anyone nuts.

Anonymous said...

Thank you. It had been driving me nuts since 2 years. This did the trick.

Anonymous said...

THANKS. It has been driving me crazy for the past 1.5 years. Simple and works.

Colly O' said...

What if the "offending appointment" does not appear on the list to delete? Still frustrated....

Anonymous said...

Thank you so much. I have been frustrated with this and it kept affecting my blackberry. Simple fix and problem resolved. Thanks again.

Jimmy said...

Colly O,
I should be there. Do you have more then one calendar? If you are using Outlook in cached mode that may cause an issue. Try deleting the .ost file or turning off outlook caching.
Jimmy

Anonymous said...

Woohoo! This article just made me look like a genious to someone who had this issue. Thanks!!

marksky said...

Thank you.... that issue has bugged me silly! :-)

Anonymous said...

Magic! Thanks for that! Such a simple thing and so much agro...

Anonymous said...

Great and quick fix. 1 week was enough I can't image folks with more than a week of annoyance.

Thijs Teeling said...

Thank you.
I had every 5 min a remider end that was very irritating.
Our ICT dept proposed to ask the meeting initiator to delete the meeting, but that did not help.

But now it is solved.
Pffffffffffffff....thanks

Thijs Teeling

Jeff Messineo said...

Nice work. Thank you for relieving something that drove me nuts, just a little. (also - good presentation.)

Allen said...

thanks a lot buddy

Alexis said...

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