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In their wisdom, Microsoft is retiring their Calendar product. Now, when I open Windows Calendar, it autoloads the "new" Outlook instead.

This is a challenge for me, because I relied on Windows Calendar to alert me to events in my Exchange calendar. I received event alerts without having to keep the Calendar app open (presumably thanks to some background-running service).

If I now have to rely on Outlook for event notifications, I have to find a way to keep Outlook open. Otherwise, I will miss events, if I accidentally close the Outlook window.

Does anyone have any recommendations for solving this?

Either I need a sure-fire way to prevent Outlook closing (or to re-open it automagically if I shut it), or a way to receive calendar notifications using some other Windows capability I've overlooked.

According to this old question, it isn't possible to get Outlook notifications when Outlook is shut. I've tested this, and it still seems to be true in 2024.

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  • If Desktop Outlook is closed, it will not notify you. I sync Calendar with Phone (iTunes) and rely upon Phone to always notify me which it does.
    – anon
    Commented Feb 7 at 13:29
  • Try this solution for using "Hide When Minimized" to keep Outlook running in the background.
    – harrymc
    Commented Feb 7 at 15:51
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    See superuser.com/questions/319838/… for a suggestion to automatically restart an app, if opened through that batch file.
    – DrMoishe Pippik
    Commented Feb 7 at 17:15

2 Answers 2

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It is still true that you cannot receive Outlook notifications when Outlook cilent is closed. You can set Outlook to start automatically when you log in to your computer or run it by task schedule.

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  • Thanks. Unfortunately, this doesn't stop me from accidentally closing the application and missing all my desktop notifications.
    – Duncan Jones
    Commented Feb 8 at 12:27
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I settled for preventing myself from accidentally closing Outlook, based on the tip from DrMoishe Pippik in the comments.

Here is the code I'm using for my batch file. I've pinned this to the task bar, and set it to run minimized.

@ECHO off

:Start
"C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.OutlookForWindows_1.2024.131.300_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe\olk.exe"

echo Press Ctrl-C if you don't want to restart automatically

TIMEOUT /T 10

GOTO Start

Health warning: This solution is quite brittle, because the program location changes every time Outlook updates itself.

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