Follow Up Flags and reminders

When flagging messages for Follow Up, I do not get any reminder pop-up for it.
Is my reminder service broken?

For Outlook 2003 and previous, flag reminders only work for messages that are stored in your default Inbox. If the messages are stored anywhere else, like for instance your Sent Items folder, flagged items will not trigger a reminder pop-up. Getting this to work will require the use of an add-in.

Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010 do support reminders for flagged items in folders other than the default Inbox folder. In case it doesn’t work for you, it could be that the minder service is indeed broken and requires a reset.

Reminder add-ins
One of the most popular add-ins in getting reminders to work for additional folders is Extended Reminders by SlovakTech. It offers you an easy to use interface to quickly select the folders (and optionally also the subfolders) to enable reminders for. The only limitation is that it only works for the default mail store (pst-file or Exchange mailbox).

If you like to have even more control over your reminders or also want reminders for flagged items in additional pst-files, then their Reminder Manager might work better for you. Reminder Manager comes with a configurable Reminder Manager Window so you can easily add/remove and resize the columns you need (something you cannot do in the Reminder Window of Outlook). In addition to that, you can also change the default alarm snooze time from the default 5 minutes to anything you like or get the reminders emailed to your pager or other mail enabled mobile device. This add-in can be with Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010 as well.

Even more reminder management add-ins can be found here.

Reminder service broken
If you are not getting any reminders for any flagged messages in your Inbox, then it’s quite likely that your reminder service in Outlook is broken. In order to restore, you’ll have to start Outlook with the cleanreminders startup switch;

• Windows XP
  Start-> Run; outlook.exe /cleanreminders
• Windows Vista and Windows 7
  Start-> type; outlook.exe /cleanreminders

This resets the current reminder status and forces Outlook to look for any item with a reminder that has not been dismissed yet.

Note: When executing this command, make sure you include the space between outlook.exe and /cleanreminders.