Fixing the reminders problem
What can you do to fix all these problems? The easiest problem, of course, would be if you were quiting Outlook and reminders didn't fire. Simply keep Outlook running. If you do, and everything now works, well, that was easy.

If you've kept the reminder items in folders other than the primary folders and you don't want to move them, you should consider getting your hands on Ken Slovak's Extended Reminders program. It will trigger reminders that live in any folder (except the Outbox and Deleted Items folder). The program is all of $15, so it's pretty much a must-buy.

Ken's also got a program called Reminder Manager that works on any mail store, not just the standard Personal Folders file. That bad boy costs a whopping $30, so it, too, is a no-brainer purchase.

But what if your reminders are damaged or corrupt? You might be screwed. But then again, you might not be.

You may not know it, but Outlook has command line options. That's right. You can launch Outlook from that oh-so-special DOS prompt and you can get it to do some wonderful things. Before I go into detail, let me again remind you to make backups. As Commandant Lassard would say, "Many, many, many backups."

From the DOS prompt, type the following:

It'll take a while and, hopefully, your reminders will be nicely restored.

Good luck!

For more than 20 years, David Gewirtz, the author of Where Have All The Emails Gone? and The Flexible Enterprise, has analyzed current, historical, and emerging issues relating to technology, competitiveness, and policy. David is the Editor-in-Chief of the ZATZ magazines, is the Cyberterrorism Advisor for the International Association for Counterterrorism and Security Professionals, and is a member of the instructional faculty at the University of California, Berkeley extension. He can be reached at david@zatz.com.