Default Reminders in New Outlook do not apply to meetings by other people

Question

Default Reminders in New Outlook do not apply to meetings by other people

Roger Henderson 25

The default reminders I set in New Outlook only apply to events that I create.

They do not apply to events that other people create and send me an invitation for.

I note from other questions that this is by design! But nowhere is the logic behind this design explained?

I think this is an astonishingly poor design decision. It makes no sense.

The person arranging the meeting has no idea about when I need to be reminded. I may need to travel to get to the meeting. I may be concentrating on something and need a 1 hour reminder and then a 5 minute reminder.

Please reverse this bizarre decision and allow the person attending the meeting to decide:1. When they need to be reminded

How many reminders they need

Google Calendar does this correctly.

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Answer accepted by question author

AlexDN 11,440 Microsoft External Staff Moderator

Hi
Thank you for understanding.

I'm sorry for not detail information. Please Open your meeting event from Calendar and check the button as picture below, you can create bulk emails to reminder that meeting.
Untitled

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AlexDN 11,440 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-08-22T01:28:40.2833333+00:00

Hi @Roger Henderson
It has been a while and I am writing to see how things are going with this issue. Have you had a chance to check the replies provided? Any update would be appreciated.
Roger Henderson 25 Reputation points

2025-08-22T01:51:52.1666667+00:00

Hi Alex,

Thank you, yes I had not discovered the option to add email reminders for Teams meetings. That is very helpful thanks.
Doran, Allan B 0 Reputation points

2026-01-28T15:48:40.3133333+00:00

Agreed. This behavior from Outlook is asinine. I have missed three meetings lately as I don't think to check that my default meeting reminder time is not applied. I am now forced to doublecheck every invite after I accepted it by then going into the calendar and doing it manually. I already set a default, use it!
David Schneider 0 Reputation points

2026-08-14T16:20:04.14+00:00

I get multiple meeting requests per day. The manual reminder setting is often the extra step too far. This was a function that worked, and it is more than an inconvenience when other people don't use reminders.

And I am using Classic Outlook - so switching back does not solve the problem as I have the correct settings, but inbound meetings never set up alerts.
Hornblower409 13,000 Reputation points

2026-08-15T05:05:21.5733333+00:00

@David Schneider said

The manual reminder setting is often the extra step too far .... And I am using Classic Outlook

You will not get any help for your issue by adding to an old post about a different Outlook Client. You need to start a new thread using the "Ask a question" button at the top of this page to create a new Question and include the details for your specific problem and Outlook Client. This provides much higher visibility to your issue than adding on to an existing post, which is only seen by people who are already following this question.

1 additional answer

AlexDN 11,440 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-08-22T01:28:40.2833333+00:00

Hi @Roger Henderson
It has been a while and I am writing to see how things are going with this issue. Have you had a chance to check the replies provided? Any update would be appreciated.
Roger Henderson 25 Reputation points

2025-08-22T01:51:52.1666667+00:00

Hi Alex,

Thank you, yes I had not discovered the option to add email reminders for Teams meetings. That is very helpful thanks.
Doran, Allan B 0 Reputation points

2026-01-28T15:48:40.3133333+00:00

Agreed. This behavior from Outlook is asinine. I have missed three meetings lately as I don't think to check that my default meeting reminder time is not applied. I am now forced to doublecheck every invite after I accepted it by then going into the calendar and doing it manually. I already set a default, use it!
David Schneider 0 Reputation points

2026-08-14T16:20:04.14+00:00

I get multiple meeting requests per day. The manual reminder setting is often the extra step too far. This was a function that worked, and it is more than an inconvenience when other people don't use reminders.

And I am using Classic Outlook - so switching back does not solve the problem as I have the correct settings, but inbound meetings never set up alerts.
Hornblower409 13,000 Reputation points

2026-08-15T05:05:21.5733333+00:00

@David Schneider said

The manual reminder setting is often the extra step too far .... And I am using Classic Outlook

You will not get any help for your issue by adding to an old post about a different Outlook Client. You need to start a new thread using the "Ask a question" button at the top of this page to create a new Question and include the details for your specific problem and Outlook Client. This provides much higher visibility to your issue than adding on to an existing post, which is only seen by people who are already following this question.

Answer 1

Hi @Roger Henderson
Thank you for posting your question in the Microsoft Q&A forum.
I completely understand how this design can feel counterintuitive, especially when your personal reminder preferences aren’t applied to meetings organized by others.
To clarify, Outlook is currently designed to use the meeting organizer’s reminder setting for all invitees. This means that when you receive a meeting invitation, the reminder time is determined by the organizer—not your personal default. If the organizer sets a 15-minute reminder, that’s what will appear on your calendar, even if your default is set to 1 hour. If no reminder is set by the organizer, Outlook typically applies a fallback default of 15 minutes.

Although there is currently no built-in setting to override this behavior, I suggest some workaround steps you can try:

Manual change after accepting

Open the event in your Outlook calendar.
Use the Reminder dropdown to select your preferred alert time.
Save and close the event. This change will only affect your calendar and won’t notify the organizer or other attendees.

Automation for all events

If you want this to happen automatically for every meeting you accept, you can consider using Power Automate flow to watches your calendar and sends you Teams or email reminders at your chosen intervals (e.g., 1 hour and 5 minutes before every)

Switching back to Classic Outlook

You may consider switching back to Classic Outlook, which still supports applying your personal default reminders to incoming meeting invites. This version may better align with your expectations while Microsoft continues to refine the New Outlook experience.

I understand those workarounds aren’t ideal, and I encourage you to share your feedback directly with Microsoft via Outlook’s Help > Feedback > I have a suggestion option or post on Outlook · Community. Many users have voiced similar concerns, and Microsoft has acknowledged this as a widely requested feature.

Please note that nobody here is the product developer/decision maker and has no control over the product. Everyone, including us as community moderators, can only assist you with the query for providing available solutions and the feature's availability status within our scope and capability.

Thank you for your cooperation and understanding.

If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.
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Roger Henderson 25 Reputation points

2025-08-19T04:33:44.52+00:00

Hi Alex,

Thanks for the effort you have put in here, and yes it is Microsofts poor decision making and design decisions which irritate. Not you or your assistance. The the fact that this decision was made in the first place remains unexplained. It is not a logical decision, makes the product worse and harder to use. Of course, we don't always get the features we want, but this one is a real head scratcher. Who does it help?

I have provided feedback using the Help/Feedback feature. What I am trying to do here is to raise awareness of this poor decision and to encourage others to apply pressure on Microsoft.

Anyway, specifically to your point. I appreciate your efforts, please correct me if I am wrong:

There is no "reminder drop down" for a Teams meeting arranged by someone else in the calendar. Am I missing something?

My current workaround is to manually create a duplicate event for every teams meeting. That way I can set a reminder on my event. I still cannot set multiple reminders, which is another weakness in Outlook.

Classic Outlook is not an option for me unfortunately.

Thanks for your help and any more light you can shed on the problem.

Roger