Outlook unable to locate recurrence of appointment. Which one?

[Gordon]

Whenever I open Outlook the following blue box pops up:

"There was a problem reading one or more of your reminders. Some reminders
may not appear. Cannot locate recurrence information for this appointment."

Is there a way I can find which appointment is causing the problem without
opening and resetting all reminders??? Or is there away to delete all
reminders and then just reset them???

The response previously suggested going to the execute file and making a
change. However, when I go to C it tells me not to change anything in these
files.

How can a "non-techie" fix this problem without having to take chances with
execute files? It seems to me a simple solution is to have the program
identify the appointment with which there is an error. But then that is a
user friendly interface isn't it, sorry forgot it was MicroSoft.

 

[Josh Einstein]

You might get a better answer in the Outlook newsgroup but I would try
running Outlook with the following command line from the start -> run menu.

Outlook.exe /cleanreminders

Internally, Outlook's reminders are based on a virtual search folder. This
will regenerate that which should not cause you to lose any reminder
settings since the reminders themselves are stored in the actual items.

 

[Gordon]

Josh:
Did as you suggested, this was also suggested by Brian Tillman back in 2005
to another user's question. However, my system comes back and tells me it is
unable to find any such file. Now what?

 

[Josh Einstein]

Sorry I should have clarified. You'll have to specify the full path to
Outlook. In fact, it might be easier just to do this:

First, make sure Outlook is closed. Check the task manager to make sure.
(Press CTL+ALT+DEL for the task manager.)

On XP: Start -> Run -> Type cmd.exe
On Vista: Start -> Search for "command prompt"

At the command prompt, change to the Office installation directory.
Typically like:

CD "\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office11" <press enter>
Outlook.exe /cleanreminders <press enter>

If you have Office 2007, change that to Office12 at the end.

 

[Gordon]

Hi Josh:
Situation is now corrected. Although I might point out to other
non-technical individuals that the task you recommend can have unexpected
consequences. In my case it reset my Outlook to default settings causing the
PST files to disappear. Had to have someone in to reset Outlook. That
resulted in my Blackberry not syncronizing properly which meant uninstalling
and reinstalling that software. All together it took about a day's work
effort to get back to where it was before the problem with the reminders.
The technician I had to call in reminded me that Outlook is "fragile" and
any small glitch will cause it to go haywire. His point has been proven time
and time again. Bottom line, my suggestion to all users is to rely on
another method of keeping your communication data files. Perhaps saving the
files to another folder rather than holding in Outlook.
Gordon

 

[Josh Einstein]

Well this is a OneNote newsgroup so at the risk of getting even further
off-topic I'll just say that technique doesn't reset Outlook to its default
settings. Maybe the technician you called did it, or maybe the underlying
cause of your reminder issue also had an impact on the PST files or what
not, but I use this command line switch all the time when debugging addins
that muck up the reminder cache. All it does is rebuilds the reminder search
folder.

Outlook isn't fragile at all (though some addins, such as the blackberry
sync program you're using may impact that). It's slow, yeah. It's plagued
with the burden of legacy COM threading models that make it unresponsive at
times, sure. But it's anything but fragile. I should know, I work with it
and all its limitations day in and day out and I built a niche around it.
It's really hard to lose data in Outlook or otherwise "break it" in such a
way that it doesn't run. I'm sorry you had a bad experience with Outlook but
I think your call for people to abandon it is unjustified.

 

[Mirtina]

I work helpdesk (Although I must admit I can't be very good at it) and one of
the people who called me has this problem. I remoted into his comp to run the
cleanreminders command, and it seemed to work, but after he restarts outlook
the error message returns.

He has already deleted all his reminders/appointments back to 2006 six, but
he either missed one or the problem is farther back than that.

Whats the next step when /cleanreminders doesn't work?

 

[CGSoniat]

I have been having the same problem. I have run the cleanreminders command
several times, the last one, per Josh's detailed instruction, from within the
office11 folder. I still get the message about the problem with a recurring
appintment.

I have searched for recurring apointments, and there does seem to be an old
one remaining, but the appointment no longer exists (I guess it was
archived?).

I would love to find a solution to this...

 

[Ross]

Follow the directions that appear in article 195748, titled "OL98: Cannot
Locate Recurrence Information for this Appointment". If you follow the
directions completely, you will find the recurring meeting that is causing
the problem and can address the issue either by changing the recurrence or,
like in my case, deleting the recurring meeting that was sent to me by
someone else and had been cancelled.

 

[undisclosed]

Josh -- Your solution. .

office.exe /cleanreminder

. . .worked great for me.

Thank you for the post

 

[Ben M. Schorr, MVP]

Actually, I believe you mean outlook.exe /cleanreminders.

--
-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr, MVP
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com
http://www.officeforlawyers.com/outlook.html
Author: The Lawyer's Guide to Microsoft Outlook 2007:
http://tinyurl.com/ol4law-amazon

in message

Josh -- Your solution. . .

office.exe /cleanreminders

. .worked great for me.

Thank you for the post.

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