Daily Task List in Calendar is corrupted

Copper Contributor

The Daily Task List in the Calendar will frequently superimpose or overlap random text or shading over the Tasks listed for a particular day. This superimposed content appears be drawn from an email or part of a Calendar entry, or it may simply be a block or grey or black shading or random numbers. I have attached TWO examples of this but, as I have said, it manifests in many different forms. In these examples, the Daily Task List for Tuesday is affected however this issue has affected the Daily Task List for any day in the Calendar. The affected day is not necessarily the ACTUAL day (i.e. today is Wednesday however the issue might be affecting the Daily Task List for Friday).

 

I can turn the Daily Task List off then on to (temporarily) rectify the issue however it reoccurs whenever I move between Outlook folders (e.g. from Calendar to Mail, then back to Calendar) .

 

I have escalated this issue via my MS Office 365 service provider who arranged for me to spend considerable time troubleshooting this issue with a very helpful Microsoft Support Engineer. We completely uninstalled then reinstalled MS Office 365 however the problem still persists. The Microsoft Support Engineer suggested this issue could be a product feature-related a bug within the application.

 

I would be grateful if you could investigate and respond and/or provide an update to resolve the issue. Thank you.

 

In this example, the tasks for Tuesday are concealed by white/grey shading and text which appears to have been pulled from an email in my Mail folder.In this example, the tasks for Tuesday are concealed by white/grey shading and text which appears to have been pulled from an email in my Mail folder.

 

In this example, the Tasks for Tuesday are concealed by a black line and white shading (there are 10 tasks listed for this day). Even though the first line only appears to be covered (i.e. black bar) the whole task pane for that day is concealed.In this example, the Tasks for Tuesday are concealed by a black line and white shading (there are 10 tasks listed for this day). Even though the first line only appears to be covered (i.e. black bar) the whole task pane for that day is concealed.

5 Replies
Hi Michael, thanks for reporting this issue. The best way to report this kind of issue is via Support, so that it can be logged & tracked. I assume the support engineer submitted a bug on your behalf, but please follow up again with support if they did not.

Hi Julia,

 

Thanks so much for your message. It has proven to be extremely difficult to find out where to turn with this issue. The whole Microsoft support experience has been sub-standard and not at all what I would expect for a paid product. The support process seems to be deliberately designed to make it difficult, even for paid customers, to make contact with the relevant support area.

 

I initially escalated the issue via my service provider (Telstra) who escalated to the Microsoft Engineer. He was excellent and was very thorough in his initial troubleshooting. We spent two hours together on the phone.  However I don't believe the Microsoft Support Engineer escalated this issue any further. He stated there would be more of a chance it would be looked at if details were logged by a customer. He stated that he believed it was a feature-related issue and advised me to log details on Outlook Uservoice. I did as he advised but subsequently received an email from an unmonitored Microsoft email advising me not to log the issue on Uservoice, but to log it on one of the following forums:

 

(Primary) Outlook consumer issues, http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/outlook
Outlook 2016 Insider builds, http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_insider
Outlook for IT and Exchange professionals, https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/home?forum=outlook
Outlook for Office 365 business subscription plans, https://community.office365.com/en-us/f/158

 

I chose the last link, however it does not work! I had no way of making contact with Microsoft so went back to my service provider, who recontacted the Microsoft Support Engineer, who then advised that I log my issue here.

 

As you can probably tell, I am less than impressed by this passing from pillar to post, especially since this is a paid product. I would be extremely grateful if you or your colleagues could, once and for all, advise the correct process/forum for escalating this issue. I would also be grateful if you could pass details of my experience onto your customer experience team so that your customer support processes might be improved. Thank you.

 

Best regards,

Michael Thurlow

 

Hi Michael,

I'm extremely sorry to hear about your experience, and I can imagine how frustrating that would be.

I spoke with the PM for the calendar module in Outlook for Windows today. Some users have reported, and she is aware of the issue. She did mention that it would help with importance of the issue if you filed a support ticket. I know you've already spent lots of time on the phone with support, but perhaps the call would be quicker if you weren't debugging & just trying to get the ticket created and sent over to the product team? The process you followed - to call into support - is the correct process. The process would have succeeded if a ticket was opened with the Outlook team by the support engineer that you spoke with, but it sounds like it failed for you. Perhaps you could ask Telstra to log it for you? Again, I apologize for the frustration on your part. We appreciate you reporting issues!

Hope that helps, but at least you can be assured now that the team is aware of the issue. :)

--Julia

This was posted in January.  I'm still experience this same issue.  A week ago, I started to get strange fonts in the Task List, so it is unreadable.  Any info on when these issues will be fixed.

Hi Lisa

If it makes you feel any better, I have exactly the same issue and have also have had no luck getting a fix.

Are you using a Surface?  

 

There are some possible solutions here:

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/ie/en-US/b0c9e917-8400-4143-996a-85f4712080c8/black-bloc...

Perhaps you could try this"

"Disabling "Use animations when expanding conversations and groups" at the bottom of the advanced outlook 2016 options fixed this problem for us on Win7 and Win10.  "