Office 365 Outlook Task Categories Disappearing

Can I ask all the people who have posted recently if they have iOS devices with Reminders sync enabled for their Outlook/Exchange account (even unknowingly), and if so, does the problem stop if they turn off Reminders sync?  If I switch off “Reminders” against my Exchange account (Settings->Passwords & Accounts->Exchange Account) on my iPhone, it definitely “solves” the problem for me, but this is not really a solution when I need the Tasks to sync with my iPhone.  To be honest, this makes me think it’s an Apple problem not a Microsoft one, but nobody seems to be discussing the problem on Apple forums, at least that I can find.

A quick update.  This is definitely related to the Apple Watch.  If my Watch (series 3 running WatchOS 6.2.1) is off at 09:00, the categories don't disappear.  If my Watch is on, they do.  What's more, any status such as "Waiting for" against a Task is wiped out at 09:00 along with the categories.

I think this has something to do with the Today Notification feature added to Reminders at iOS 13.  By default this runs at 09:00, and it's as though this is still doing something to update the Tasks at 09:00, even if it is switched off in Settings.  When this syncs to Exchange, the Tasks are updated, minus Categories which, of course, Reminders doesn't support.  You can see the Tasks are being updated at 09:00 (by looking at the Modified Date through Outlook).

Further, even with my Watch switched off, if Reminders on my iPhone are lagging behind a bit with changes made elsewhere (and let's face it, they normally are), at 09:00 the version on my iPhone is "merged" with the version on my Exchange account.  For example, if I remove a Category on the Exchange Task and replace it with another, but the change hasn't yet sync'ed to my iPhone, at 09:00 the Category re-appears against the Task, alongside the replacement.

So, in summary, I think the sync'ing of Exchange Tasks to iPhone and Watch is pretty much screwed, and I have no idea how to log this with Apple.  And since turning off my Watch just before 09:00 every day is not really an option, I guess I'm back to switching off Reminders sync for my Exchange account until a fix arrives.

Perhaps someone from Microsoft will chime in here..

Categories are disappearing for me as well, which is a source of confusion and discomfort, to put it gently.

Hi Bianca J.R,

Thank you for the posting in our forum community. I'm truly appreciating your cooperation in our forum community.

>>>>> Regarding your description about “I do have my Office 365 Outlook tasks go to my iPhone, however I don't do anything with them there.  I did disable the "reminders" in the iPhone Exchange sync, just to take it out of the equation”<<<<<

May I please confirm that whether the issue has been resolved from this mentioned description steps?

Kindly feel free to contact us with your updated information as per your convenient time.

Regards,

Darpan