Change reminder time of all automatically generated birthday events in the Birthdays calendar

Steel Contributor

When I create a contact in Outlook and add a birthday to that contact, a new event is created in the special Birthdays calendar. This is great and it works fine. The reminder for those birthdays however is set to 18 hours before the birthday, so every day at 12 o'clock I get reminders, that there is a birthday tomorrow. This is sometime confusing, because I want the reminder to be on the same day as the birthday. Is it possible to change this default 18 hours reminder?

10 Replies
Can you just modify an event manually? If you have several thousands events, create a VBA script in Outlook or a PowerShell script.
The Birthday calendar is read-only and the events there are generated from the birth dates of your contacts. You cannot edit them in Outlook. But even if I could, every time I create a new contact I must change its reminder.

Hi @Kiril,

have a look at this: How to edit Birthday Calendar in Outlook 365
 

And yes, every time you create a new contact you have to change its reminder.

 

Theoretically, you can create a PowerAutomate flow that will do that silently in the background.

 

Thank you for the link, but none of the information provided there is relevant for this issue. I know how to "edit" if that means adding new entries to it: create a contact with a birthdate and then the birthdate appears on the birthday calendar.

I need to somehow modify the entries in the calendar which are read-only.

I tried your suggestion and created a cloud flow, however the calendar is read-only (Error: Your request can't be completed. Read-only calendars can't be modified)

Sorry I don't catch you point. When you select a birthday event and then click Edit, can you change it? If not, try to log in as admin.

 

Upadte: just another useful link (I hope)

@Victor_Ivanidze When I open a birthday event in the special Birthday calendar generated by Outlook/Exchange (not my personal calendar), then all the entries are read-only:

 

KirilValev_0-1636558061946.png

 

EDIT: Interesting, when I try it online I can edit the Birthday calendar. But when I do it in the desktop Outlook client then it doesn't work. However, I am still stuck in doing it manually for all birthday events.

Hi @Kiril , have you managed to find a solution to this?

 

I would also like to receive the birthday notification the day of.

@Michaelvanroxel 

No, unfortunately not. But I haven't followed up on the issue in the last two years. Back then the only solution was a manual updates of the birthday events.

@KirilYeah, that seems to still be the case. It's massively painful, I have *hundreds* of birthdays saved and I often miss them because I have to dismiss the reminder on my mobile device the day before and then forget on the actual day because there's no reminder.

@Kiril@Justin_Martinet al,
On desktop Outlook, editing the birthday calendar most usually creates a "you cannot make changes to the contents of this read-only folder" error. To cure this, you should reconfigure your desktop Outlook to use Online mode instead of Cache mode (File, Accounts, select the account that contains your birthday-calendar, uncheck the "Use Cached Exchange Mode to download emails to an Outlook data file"). An Outlook restart will be needed and after this you'll be finally able to edit/delete any records of the Birthday Calendar! [Reference: https://www.o-xchange.com/2014/01/you-cannot-make-changes-to-contents-of.html]
If someone has any update on HOW to change the default 1080minutes Birthdays reminder, would be great!