Outlook.com Calendar birthdays sync issue

On a rainy day, could you (or others with this automatic birthday calendar trouble) please test the following?

Shut down the phone and any applications using live.com i.e. Windows Live mail.

Log in to people.live.com

Unlink the connection to Twitter, Facebook etc.

On people.live.com select all the local contacts and create a .csv backup from the menu.

Store the backup safely!

Select all the local contacts on people.live.com and delete all.

Select calendar.live.com and remove the automatic birthday calendar from the settings.

Log out from live.com

Create a copy of the contacts .csv file (for safety) and inspect the copy for weird characters, erroneous extra white space, and that the contacts birthdays appear correctly in i.e. Notepad. It looks a bit messy, and this step can be omitted if you are not sure what I am talking about. The file looked OK in my case.

Log in to people.live.com

The contacts list should appear empty, with an import option at the bottom.

Import the contacts from the backup .csv file - the guide asks if everything looks OK and also have an option to merge duplicates. Inspect and complete the import.

Select calendar.live.com and enable the Birthday calendar.

Select the main calendar and check that the contacts birthdays appear. It may take a minute or two to refresh - or it can be forced to refresh from the settings menu as discussed previously.

Log out from live.com

Start up the phone

In settings -> mail + accounts - long press the Microsoft account and select sync, if it is not sync'ing already. It takes a while to complete.

The contacts and birthdays of the contacts on the phone should now appear correctly.

Notice: The carefully collected thumbnail images of my local contacts are gone after this.

The automatic birthday calendar now works as advertised for me during a week and lots of sync'ing and testing on live.com, on the phone, and in Windows Live Mail: New contacts with birthday details appear in the calendar automatically, and changes to existing contacts also reflects in the automatic birthday calendar.

I still have no idea what caused the flaw to appear in the first place after working correctly for months, so it may prove a tough one to debug in the Microsoft labs (and I will let you know if/when it comes back) .

Now link Twitter, Facebook etc. back to the Microsoft account from mail + accounts, showing "Attention required" or from the guide on people.live.com if you want.

Please report back later if you went for this drastic step, both if successful and also if it did not work for you?

Disclaimer: Always store an extra backup of everything important.

--

Hans

I have the same problem.  I followed the steps above but could not find the words "Refresh now".  I spent an hour on the phone with tech support for Microsoft.  The tech person had no idea what I was talking about.  This seems to be a big problem why aren't tech people aware of it.

@DedeLandry don't even try the suggestions.  This problem has been known by Microsoft for a long time now.  This thread was reported in May 2014!  There are several other threads also dealing with this issue.  Microsoft has no priority in resolving the issue.  Apparently my info was sent to Support at the end of Sept.  I am still waiting.

The only way to resolve this issue is to remove the linking of 3rd party contacts (i.e. Facebook and Skype) from your account and to maintain all birthday reporting in Outlook contacts. 

Delete and then recreate your birthday calendar after disabling the 3rd party linking. 

All of the Outlook birthdays will appear in your calendar.  Birthdays are not lost if only Outlook account exists.

P.S.To refresh the birthday calendar:

  Choose "Options" from the Settings Menu.  

  Choose "Birthday Calendar".

  "Refresh now" is a link under the "Last refreshed" entry.

I agree with @RalphLea_771. What Microsoft doing with this problem is   ridiculous. I don't know will they discover a new America?!

I'm really disappointed with their support team. They have to just connect contact birthdays and set one of them to primary.

In 4 years, i  will have could fix this when i finish college :P

Ok i'm sorry for my bad english. I have to improve it. :)

We understand your concern with urgently resolving this issue with your birthday calendar and we apologize for not getting back to you sooner. However, we've checked your inquiry and determined that it's still under investigation by our Support Specialists. Rest assured that we are doing our best to fix this. We'll notify you on this thread as soon as updates about it have been provided.

Have a happy December, all together!

Unfortunately, still we're playing birthdays roulette. For this month, here's my birthdays calendar and screenshots of contacts with known birthdays, currently missing in the calendar:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/mabp12x7z6wrnz6/AADXNBbpAAzqhpOjLGxvV5TGa?dl=0

I permit to summarize again:

• Birthdays disappear and sometimes re-appear in calendar by random
• All types of contacts are affected**: standalone Outlook.com contacts, linked contacts, standalone Facebook/ Skype etc. contacts**
• Manual sync of birthdays calendar doesn't resolve
• Un- and relinking contacts as well as deleting and recreating the birthdays calendarmight result in more or less complete listing of birthdays on short-term -but it doesn't solve the service bug in general**: birthdays will randomly disappear and re-appear again**

This issue is reported since months! Might get assumed that just syncing a Birthdays calendar properlyshouldn't mean rocket science for a company like Microsoft ...

@Moderators: what does it take to make you just take this issue serious, reported and confirmed repeatedly?Wasting customers time by annoying them with senseless boilerplates again and again doesn't resolve the issue! What exactly is the state of investigation? Have you even reported this to Microsoft? Are they aware of this thread for instance?

@Microsoft - aren't yourselves using your offered services? Please realize: an inconsistent birthdays calendar service is worthless. Please analyze the birthday calendars' sync processes and finally fix the service!

Any kind of serious support is highly appreciated. We're all curious about findings and results. Since months...

Thanks.