Birthdays Disappearing From Outlook.com Calendar

Anonymous
2015-01-06T01:57:11+00:00

I have been having the same trouble with the Outlook.com birthday calendar that many users have reported.  I just wanted to add my findings to the discussion.  Here are some details that might be helpful

  1. All the contacts listed in "People" for which I know their birthday have their birthday listed as Other Information.  I only use month and day, not the year as I don't ask for this. (some people are sensitive about their age)
  2. In the past this has worked fine.
  3. Recently, about 2 months ago, I noted that birthdays had disappeared from the calendar.  I added back the missing birthdays and verified these against an address book I have for a card site I subscribe too.  Both the People listing and my card Address book were identical for people with birthdays
  4. I again discovered a problem beginning with January 2015.  All of the previous entries for that month were now gone!
  5. I checked through all months of the calendar and 37 of 47 birthday entries were now missing.
  6. I decided to re-enter every birthday manually, using by Clicking on "New" in the calendar display and selection "Birthday" from the drop down dialogue box.
  7. I manually re-entered all 47 birthdays that way.
  8. I verified each month after this was done and every birthday I entered was displayed.
  9. About an hour later I checked again and all the birthdays were there.
  10. Five hours later only 10 of the birthdays displayed.

11.I went back to the People option and decided to see what would happen if I elected to clean up contacts.

  1. For each of the people that I had manually entered a birthday, a second contact appeared in my People list, with only the name and the birthday.
  2. I elected not to clean up the contact list at this time
  3. I refreshed the birthday calendar three times.  On the second attempt to refresh, I removed the calendar item.  I was originally using the little birthday cake.
  4. The refresh had absolutely no effect on the calendar display.
  5. I am going to look back tomorrow and if the birthdays are still not displayed I will delete the birthday calendar and in three days I will recreate it to see if any of the birthdays sync from my people's list.  Before I do that I will delete the duplicate contact created by the manual addition of the birthdays that I did today.
  6. I only offer this information in an attempt to solve this bug.  Its obvious from the posts that many people are pretty ticked off by the lack of action in resolving this issue.
  7. Its rather sad that you can't rely on the outloook.com calendar any more.  If there has been a solution, I  would appreciate knowing it.
  8. FYI I do not use any social networking sites, so I have no other birthday data stored anywhere else.
Outlook | Web | Outlook.com | Calendar

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-01-06T23:30:08+00:00

    Hello Uttam Yadav.

    I am happy to respond to your questions.

    How Do You Access Outlook.com?

    I receive my e-mail accounts through my internet service provider which in this case is Bell Canada.  Originally, when I first set up my e-mail accounts about 8 years ago, they were all hotmail accounts.  They all ended in the same designation "@sympatico.ca". Some time ago, my understanding was that "Hotmail" was taken over by microsoft.  At that point the sign in page changed a little and it became the sign in page for outlook.com.  The "@sympatico.ca" never changed.  Its the same sign in page that can be found at https://www.outlook.com.  I never store passwords on my computer, so each time I log into one of my e-mail accounts,  I enter both the e-mail address and password.  I have the sign in page set as a bookmark in my browser's Bookmarks Toolbar,  so I just click on it and it takes me right to the sign in page.  When I finish an e-mail session I always click on my name in the Outlook Bar next to wheel cog, and I always exit, before closing my browser. I use 10 character passwords which are different for each e-mail account.

    Do you use Internet Explorer to access outlook.com or any mail app?

    My default browser is Firefox.  I prefer this browser over Internet Explorer.  I have not used Internet Explorer as a routine browser for over seven years.  However, when I was trying to investigate this problem after reading some of the threads, I closed my firefox browser and opened internet explorer.  I went to the outlook.com sign in page as noted above in my first response.  I clicked on the small boxes to the Left of the words Outlook.com and opened my calendar.  The calendar opened through that browser and had the same 11 birthdays that were present when I opened the calendar through my firefox browser.  I repeated the test by advancing the calendar months quickly forward from 2015 to Jan 2018, and then rapidly backward again to January 2015.  After that procedure, I reviewed the calendar months slowly one by one for 2015 and the 11 previously displayed birthdays were missing.  I waited a few minutes and repeated the review of all the months for 2015.  Still no birthdays.  I closed out the browser completely.  I then opened Internet Explorer again and selected calendar and all 11 birthdays were displayed again.  I do not own a mobile phone, so I do not use any mail apps and I do not belong to any social networks.

    Are you referring to your Outlook.com Calendar (https://calendar.live.com )? If that is the case, please check if all your calendars are ticked just like in the snippet below:

    Yes, it is the same calendar as indicated in your link.  In fact I opened the calendar using your link and repeated the test with fast foward and reverse of the months and all the 11 birthdays disappeared again.  I closed the tab for the link.  Went back and accessed your link again and low and behold, all 11 birthdays were there again.   Also, I have 3 calendars: "Bruce's Calendar", "Birthday Calendar" and "Canada Holidays" Calendar.  All three have the check marks as indicated in your snippet.  I un-checked the birthday calendar and then checked all the months for 2015.  All showed no birthdays.  I then did the forward and reverse month review from 2015-Jan 2018.  I reviewed 2015 and there were no birthdays.  I then re-set the checkmark for the birthday calendar and all 11 birthdays were displayed.

    I hope these responses are satisfactory for your needs.  If you require any other information, please do not hesitate to contact me.  ~~ Bruce Z.

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-01-06T20:42:15+00:00

    Hi Bruce,

    Thank you for posting your query in Microsoft Community.

    From the issue description, I understand you are facing an issue with calendar in Outlook.com.

    I appreciate if you could answer a few questions:

    1. How do you access Outlook.com?
    2. Do you use Internet Explorer to access Outlook.com or any mail app?

    Are you referring to your Outlook.com Calendar (https://calendar.live.com )? If that is the case, please check if all your calendars are ticked just like in the snippet below:

    We're looking forward to your reply.

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-01-06T14:46:39+00:00

    Im Just adding additional information to the above report.  This morning I examined my calendar.  There are the same 11 birthdays (out of 47) in the People list.  I checked each of those records in "People" and there is nothing significantly different about them.  Each have the e-mail address, the name of the person, a note, and the birthday.  Though all months have birthdays if they were displayed. One or more birthdays only appear in Feb, April, June, Aug, Sept, Nov and Dec.

    I scrolled through the months rapidly backward to January 2012 and then rapidly forward to 2015 by clicking on the arrows next to the month.  Suddeny, all the birthdays that were displayed now disappeared.  I refreshed the birthday calendar and the same 11 re-appeared.

    I repeated this test by scrolling foward rapidly from 2015 to 2018.  The same thing happened.  This time I did not refresh the calendar, but logged out of my e-mail and then signed in again.  Again the same 11 birthdays were there.  I was able to reproduce this action 2 more times.  Hope this is helpful

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