greg koelbl

I have outlook xp installed on workstations in a network
using Exchange server 2000. I want to share the calendar
folder with users on the other workstations so
appointments can be entered by any user and all other
users can see those appointments. This ability is already
possible via exchange mailboxes where I've created a
mailbox-enabled user called outlookshared and have given
other users permission to access that user's shared
calendar. My PROBLEM is that when someone makes an
appointment and sets a REMINDER, when you click SAVE &
CLOSE a message appears stating "he Reminder may not
appear because item is not in your calendar", meaning
Primary Calendar. Is there any way to get the Reminder to
appear on the users' workstations even though it wasn't
entered in the Primary Calendar, because this seems like a
legitimate activity to be made available to shared users!
And if it can't, is there a workaround or other solution
for providing Reminders to users wanting to be notified
when an appointment is approaching its time?

sue mosher [mvp]

Outlook fires reminders only for items in your default Inbox, Contacts, Calendar, and Tasks folders. To get reminders from other folders, you must use a third-party tool. Reminder Manager (http://www.slovaktech.com/remindermanager.htm) is a client application that makes it possible for Outlook to fire reminders from any calendar, contacts, mail, or tasks folder visibile in the Folder List, including those in Public Folders.

Another client application, Important Dates Plus (http://www.infoware.ca/content/infoframe.htm?imprtdat.asp), stores reminders in a database and allows the user to set recurring reminders on an item in any folder, including Public Folders, and designate which people should be notified of the reminder. A separate program queries the database and sends out the reminders as email messages.

A server-side solution would be to build an Exchange 2000/2003 event sink to periodically query the folder for items with reminders due and send out an email message, perhaps to all authorized users of the folder. The place to start for information on that is http://msdn.microsoft.com/exchange/.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Outlook and Exchange solutions at http://www.slipstick.com
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming: Jumpstart
for Administrators, Power Users, and Developers
http://www.outlookcode.com/jumpstart.aspx