Hot to stop Outlook reminders from hiding behind other open programs

February 21, 2008 9:04 AM

Co-worker's Outlook (2003) reminders pop up fifteen minutes and five minutes before appointments, but invariably hide behind whatever application is being worked on. Meetings are being missed or appearances are late because of this. How to make the reminders less shy? My searching turns up nothing.
posted by IndigoJones to computers & internet (10 comments total)

Connect some cheap speakers? The default is to play 'reminder.wav' I think. You could set it to something really loud, long, and highly annyoing.

You can set the sound options for each appointment individually, by the way. So you could go with something soft for regular appointsments and something more drastic for the "miss-and-you'll-die"-type of events. Just click on that little speaker icon when setting up an appointment and choose the appropriate sound file.
posted by Nightwind at 9:19 AM on February 21

He may have a program such as PowerMenu, which can keep certain windows "on top". This kind of feature also exists in some current display driver extra functionality.

If you right-click on Outlook's title, is there an "Always on top" option? If not, is there any unusual submenu like "nView Options" with an option within for "Always on top"? The option can also be set on a sub-submenu called something like "Individual options".

If the last exists, and the option in the sub-submenu dialog exists, then you could expect this behavior to be persistent from one usage session to the next.
posted by blue_wardrobe at 9:30 AM on February 21

If you find out the answer and what the previous problem settings were, please post them. I have the opposite problem: New meeting notices pop to the top, grab focus, and depending upon what I'm typing at the time disappear immediately. A horrible PITA.
posted by unixrat at 10:04 AM on February 21

@unixrat: then PowerMenu may be for you.
posted by blue_wardrobe at 10:05 AM on February 21

If you right-click on Outlook's title, is there an "Always on top" option? If not, is there any unusual submenu like "nView Options" with an option within for "Always on top"? The option can also be set on a sub-submenu called something like "Individual options".

Nothing like that, alas. Seems pretty white bread

(@unixrat - noted, you're on the list)
posted by IndigoJones at 11:13 AM on February 21

The "Always on Top" functionality could be coded into whatever application she is working with (the one that isn't Outlook). Does it consistently happen when she's working in a certain application? Create some test reminders and watch what happens when different apps are open.
posted by SuperSquirrel at 11:29 AM on February 21

BTW, I have to confess I went through a period of this for inexplicable reasons, to the extent that the task bar was ALSO behind stuff, even when IT was set to on top. So I think strangeness is par for the course in some of these cases.
posted by blue_wardrobe at 11:45 AM on February 21

I think this is the ForegroundLockTimeout, but do be aware there are some good reasons why Microsoft changed this default in XP and Vista.

TweakUI has the option as 'Prevent applications from stealing focus'
posted by Lanark at 12:08 PM on February 21

a) I *wish* I could keep things from stealing the application focus.
b) That's what notify sounds, the systray, and the taskbar is for. So you can see things that are not in focus.
posted by gjc at 5:14 PM on February 21

@blue_wardrobe: That power_menu works great - thanks!
posted by unixrat at 8:46 PM on February 21