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What to do: Outlook reminders pop up while typing, get dismissed accidentally

The title about says it all. I have many tasks an appointments set up with reminders. Sometimes, reminders pop up every few minutes. Because I keyboard a lot, I tend to be in the middle of typing when the reminder pops up. If I happen to be pressing the space bar (which, as you can see, is every 4-5 characters on average), the reminder gets dismissed.

Short of closing Outlook while I'm working, is there any way to prevent this from happening?

Related question: Am I weird, or has anyone else found this to be a problem?

-Van

sunray_2003

Dear vknowles,

Reminder popup because it is basically reminding you of some event..

You might have put snooze or something .. check that

Thanks,
Sunray

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vknowles

ASKER

Hey, I know why it happens (i.e., popping up and taking the focus while I'm typing in another window).

Seems to me Microsoft would have provided an option to allow it to pop up and _not_ take the focus. After all, they own the operating system.

Sunray, I tested this and what happens is if you press the space bar while the reminder is in focus, the reminder is dismissed.

So, maybe the answer is nothing can be done and I'm too picky because no one else seems to be bothered by this...

Thanks!

-Van

vknowles

ASKER

(My "Thanks!" above is genuine, not sarcastic.)

vknowles

ASKER

Hey, it's okay by me, although I am still mad at Microsoft for letting windows pop up and take the focus while you're doing something else.

Anyway, my brute-force solution was to just close Outlook. I wrote a little DOS bat file that displays a reminder to open Outlook and see what's happening. I put that into the Windows scheduler. So, periodically a DOS window pops up and I stop what I'm doing and check Outlook -- and immediately close it again.

Geez. It seems so basic, that the window with the focus should retain the focus until the _user_ decides to change it. Fine to have certain windows pop up, but the focus should remain where it was!

End of tirade.