How do we do it? 2.) Deleting “Ghost Reminders” using MFCMapi

Consider the following scenario:

You’re Mailbox resides on an Exchange 2003, Exchange 2007 or Exchange 2010 Server.

You are using Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007 or Outlook 2010.

You have a incoming meeting request your INBOX. You accept it, it gets saved to your calendar as accepted. Now you have the meeting.

The meeting also has a reminder set ( for Example 15 Minutes before start ).

You receive the Reminder for the Meeting in the Outlook client, you dismiss this and head off to the meeting you are happy you won't forget about it.

When you come back, you restart Outlook or your computer has been restarted for whatever reason ( for Example Updates ).

The reminder you just dismissed an hour ago, is popping up again. This happens each time you start Outlook. You can also observe this behavior in Owa. This is really annoying I must say.

Here’s how we “dismiss” this annoying reminder for good:

We call these Reminders “Ghost Reminders”. They are reminders that have been dismissed, something wrong occurred during this operation and the Mapi Property telling Outlook not to show this reminder again was not written correctly.

You would say: no problem I will dismiss this again and it will go away. You can try to do this, but it’s not 100% percent bulletproof.

To dismiss this reminder once and for all , do the following:

We need the following tool: https://mfcmapi.codeplex.com/

1.) Create an Outlook Profile, in Online Mode.

2.) Launch MfcMapi.exe, select Session -> Logon and display Store Table, choose the profile created under the previous step, click OK.

3.) Double click your Mailbox.

4.) Expand the Root Container and double click the Reminders Folder.

5.) Sort by subject name ( you should be able to remember the name of the reminder that bothers you every day ).

6.) Select it, right click it , Delete it ( when asked, perform a hard delete ).

7.) YOU’RE DONE!

If you have any questions, please send me an Email to patrisel@microsoft.com

Patrick