Outlook.com Calendar birthdays sync issue

Microsoft is not taking this seriously, so I suggest that everyone who hasn't done so already:

• refers an Answer Tech to this thread on http://support.microsoft.com/ContactUs/TechnicalSupport (Outlook.com)
• reports the problem on https://status.live.com/report?productid=cal (Something else)
• clicks on 'Me Too' under 'Had this question' next to the original post

Any other routes? :)

I just permitted to post a corresponding comment on "Blogging Windows", where Windows 10 gets big hype and attention preliminary, encouraging everyone here to follow:

http://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwindows/2014/12/17/december-update-on-the-windows-insider-program/#comment-14921

Thanks! The last reply from Microsoft was on September 27; they are turning a blind eye...

just ask on twitter... #BirthdayRoulette @MicrosoftHelps

We'll ser how this turns out. But I thing we'll see us next year here too. So merry xmas and a happy new year, see you in 2015

https://twitter.com/MarkyMarkNo1/status/553493368719048705

Eight months have passed by and still there is no solution from Microsoft.  There are a lot of notes saying it’s with the software engineers etc etc, but still no resolution. I also see repeated comments from a few users expressing their dissatisfaction with the lack of response or action from Microsoft to correct the problem.

Good summary of what (has not) happened so far.

I have spent some hours reviewing many posts regarding the disappearing birthdays and the outlook.com birthday calendar.  From my review, it would seem that the some of the initial reports came through as early as May 2014.  Eight months have passed by and still there is no solution from Microsoft.  There are a lot of notes saying it’s with the software engineers etc etc, but still no resolution. I also see repeated comments from a few users expressing their dissatisfaction with the lack of response or action from Microsoft to correct the problem. 

I am at present considering Microsoft’s request for access to my account and the request for a screen shot of one of the calendar pages where there should be 4 birthdays and none are shown. If I do that, it will happen after the downtime planned for January 9.  Seven days following that, I will delete the birthday calendar.   I will wait another 7 days for several syncing cycle to occur before re-creating a birthday calendar.  I will watch for a further 5 days to see if it re-syncs itself with birthdays from the People Hub.  If not I will manually repopulate it again and then I will then watch to see when those birthdays disappear.  If only one goes missing I will abandon the birthday calendar altogether until Microsoft announces a fix. 

Fortunately, I belong to an inexpensive commercial card site which has a great address book for birthday information.  The site sends me an e-mail notification of an upcoming birthday event about a week before the actual day.  The reason I used the outlook calendar as well, was to facilitate sending cards out.  I would sit down and do all the birthday cards for the month at one go and simply set the send dates for the cards as the actual birthday of the person.  Now I will do this when I am notified of the birthday. 

I realize this is not a solution for many users out there, especially if you are using social networks or a cell phone.  I have neither, so the loss of the birthday calendar is only a minor inconvenience to me.

I agree with several other posters that the issue relates to the syncing of the birthday information in the People Hub (contacts list) and the calendar itself.  Also, the 24-48 hour time frame for syncing seems snail slow given today’s technologies. There is no rhyme nor reason for why some are there and some have faded away.  I have several people in “groups” in my People Hub.  I checked to see if this was an interference, but all the people whose birthdays still show are in one or more of my groups so that’s not it.  The same is true for the missing birthdays.

I unfortunately started a new thread because I was unfamiliar with how to use the forums.  I will keep an eye on the relevant threads to see what transpires but I am not holding out any great hope that this issue is of enough significance to Microsoft to get resolved any time soon.  If you want to see my original posting, it can be found here:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/ocalendar-obirthday/birthdays-disappearing-from-outlookcom-calendar/2ebc2035-7de7-46c7-bda3-aabe21f4fc0d

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.

Happy new year, all together!

Unfortunately, still we're playing birthdays roulette. For January, here's my birthdays calendar and screenshots of contacts with known birthdays, currently missing in the calendar, while tomorrow's results might be different:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/4fb18iqo69fczh9/AACX6FVwF1yIAPuiN1KkA3Sla?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

Just had the same issue here, on two separate accounts:

1. built out a list of contacts in People and added Birthdays (using website People via outlook.com)
2. Added bespoke Birthdays to the website Calendar (which generated new contacts)
3. Calendar worked fine
4. Exported contacts list
5. Imported contacts to second account
6. Calendar self populated with Birthdays
7. Sync'd both with Surface Pro 3 Calendar & People app
8. All fine for 2 days
9. This morning went to add new event on Calendar app on Surface
10. All Calendar resync'd and removed all birthday events automatically
11. Checked 2nd account and same happened, all Birthdays removed.
12. Checking all contacts in the website People and their Birthdays all exist
13. Can't get them to appear on the Calendar automatically anymore
14. Not going to manually add them again.
15. Normal events (i.e. meetings) still exist, so I could manually add everything as a meeting with a Birthday charm.

Note - also noticed that the People app in win 8 (on Surface) doesn't show Birthdays and you can't add them here, assume the birthday data still exists - just want to confirm in case its a sync issue between device and web client.

Cheers