Hello, I am a IT professional and I was wondering if their was a way to get your Tasks and Reminders Alerts to pop up when Outlook is closed out.

The people having problems are using XP Pro Service Pack 2 and 3. Plus, some people get their pop ups when they get a new email and some don't. Is their a setting that needs to be in place for the new email alert to pop when you're not in Outlook?

Outlook runs as a user program on your computer. What that means is runs in the foreground, and when you quit the program, it (eventually) clears out of Window's memory and shuts down.

There are programs that run in the background. Some of these are tray applications that only seem to run in the background, but hide their user interface until selected. Others run as truly background tasks, operating as Windows services, accessible through the Services console.

But Outlook doesn't work like that. When it's open, it'll churn through reminders and incoming email, displaying alerts and reminders based on the various preferences you set. But when it's closed, it's completely unaware of what's happening on your system.

Now, you've asked about two completely different sorts of alerts: reminders and new mail. Let's talk about reminders, first. Reminders are controlled solely within Outlook. They're set inside Outlook and every minute or so, Outlook checks to see what reminders are scheduled and if there are any, it'll pop up an alert. There are a lot of reasons reminders might not pop up -- so many, in fact, that we've got a whole troubleshooting section dedicated to the question. Take a look at the many articles there. I'm sure one or more will help.

Incoming mail is a different story. Outlook generally polls a mail server to get access to email. Depending on whether the mail's on an SMTP server or an Exchange server, the way the mail gets into Outlook may be different, but in each case, if Outlook is closed, you won't get new-mail notifications.

There are some third party programs that will constantly scan your SMTP server and see if there's mail. I don't recommend them, because they'll often get in the way of Outlook, but if you're determined to know about all the mail you've got coming in, you could check the various shareware sites and download one of the many little system tray hacks.

David Gewirtz is the author of How To Save Jobs and Where Have All The Emails Gone? For more than 20 years, he 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 and you can follow him at http://www.twitter.com/DavidGewirtz.