New Outlook: Shadow contacts not stored in Outlook.com, no sync/export and missing Birthday calendar
I’m reporting a reproducible data‑integrity issue in the New Outlook for Windows that affects Outlook.com contact storage and synchronization. 🔍 Summary When a contact is created in the New Outlook, the client appears to save it successfully. However, the resulting contact is not stored in the user’s Outlook.com account as a normal cloud contact. Instead, it becomes what I would describe as a local “shadow contact” in the New Outlook cache. ⚠️ Observable Behavior • The contact appears in Outlook.com → People, but does not show “Stored in: Outlook” • The contact does not appear in Outlook.com CSV exports • The contact does not sync to mobile devices connected to the same account • The contact does not populate the Outlook.com Birthday calendar • The contact is lost if the New Outlook app is reinstalled or its local store is cleared 🧪 Steps to Reproduce 1. Open the New Outlook for Windows 2. Create a new contact and add a birthday 3. Save the contact 4. Open Outlook.com → People 5. Locate the contact — it will appear, but the “Stored in: Outlook” field is missing 6. Export contacts from Outlook.com (CSV) — the contact will not be present 7. Check a mobile device configured with the same Microsoft account — the contact will not be present 8. Check the Outlook.com Birthday calendar — the birthday will not appear 9. Reinstall the New Outlook app — the contact will be gone ✅ Expected Behavior • Contacts created in the New Outlook should be stored as first‑class Outlook.com contacts • They should appear with a proper “Stored in: Outlook” location • They should sync across devices, export via Outlook.com, and populate the Birthday calendar ❌ Actual Behavior • Contacts created in the New Outlook are effectively “shadow contacts” stored in a local cache • They look normal in the New Outlook UI, but they are incomplete, non‑synchronizing objects from the service’s perspective 📉 Impact • Silent data loss risk for users who assume contacts are in Outlook.com when they are not • Inconsistent contact and birthday data across devices and services • Split contact store model: • Real Outlook.com contacts • Local shadow contacts created by New Outlook 📎 What I’ve Already Done • Submitted feedback through the New Outlook (Help → Feedback → Report a Problem) • Submitted a detailed report via the Windows Feedback Hub • Contacted Microsoft Support, who advised that escalation must occur via Feedback 📣 Request I’m posting this here to document the issue publicly and to ask: • Can anyone from the Outlook / Exchange / Outlook.com team confirm this behavior? • Can other users reproduce this with the steps above? Given the data‑integrity implications, I’m hoping this can be brought to the attention of the relevant engineering team. Any confirmation, additional data points, or official guidance would be appreciated.What do you think about RSVP in Outlook?
Hello Calendar Community, RSVP (responding to meeting invitations) is an area with lots of opportunity for improvements in Outlook Calendar. I’m reaching out to gather your feedback on RSVP. We’re particularly interested in understanding: Ease of Use: How intuitive and user-friendly do you find the current RSVP process? Functionality: Are there any features you wish were included to improve the RSVP experience? Efficiency: How could we make RSVPing quicker and more efficient for you? Overall Experience: Any other comments on your overall experience with the RSVP functionality? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. I am really eager for some insights from our community and its power calendar users. cheers, Gio
Outlook for Mac event hard limit hiding events with a '+' in all views
Since a recent update, Outlook for Mac now rolls up events into a plus(+) button on Day, Three Day, Working Week and Month views. What this means is that despite having plenty of space to show events, they're hidden behind another button. I have a very busy calendar and mostly use the month view - I have a portrait monitor particularly used for the calendar at the office which is now totally useless because all the real estate that aspect creates is wasted. I don't understand what added value the + button brings when there is space to be used and I have tried and failed to find something I can configure to change it! Month View Example - Seems to have a 7 event hard limit Day View Example - Hard limit of three for all day events I would also love love love the ability to scroll through months in month view - for example, in the last two weeks of a month I want to be viewing the next 4-5 weeks not two weeks in the past I don't care about and only two weeks into the future. Seems like an easy ask?
Outlook calendar: Syntax for describing meeting series is off
When I set up a meeting series to occur on the fourth Wednesday of each month, for example, the calendar invite defaults to read "Occurs every fourth Wednesday." This is incorrect. The problem is more obvious if the meeting falls on, say, the second Wednesday (or whatever day) of the month. The invite then reads "Occurs every second Wednesday." No it does not! "Occurs on the second Wednesday monthly" is what it should read. Please fix!!!
Migrated users in a new MS Tenant have old calendar invites from previous tenant users
Good afternoon. We recently moved a group of users to a new Microsoft tenant. Before the migration, some users had sent out meeting invitations while using the old tenant. Now that they’ve transitioned to the new tenant, they were able to remove those meetings from their Outlook client. However, the attendees who received those invitations still see the meetings in their calendars I have tried to use the command "Remove-CalendarEvents" but because the original account was used to create the invites under the old tenant, the command cannot find that email address in the new tenant. Any help would be greatly appreciated.Outlook not parsing ics invites with rrule BYMONTHDAY=-1 or BYSETPOS=-1 properly
Current Behavior When an ics event is attached or imported as a file, and the rrule contains either BYMONTHDAY=-1 or BYSETPOS=-1, it is not properly converted to the outlook/exchange meeting type and the ics attachment will read as "not supported calendar message". It is possible to work around this by appending an additional semicolon to any property in the rrule string prior to the BYMONTHDAY=-1 or BYSETPOS=-1. However, the workaround above is actually syntactically invalid. Sending .ics invites that contain an rrule with this workaround that are opened in any application other than outlook would fail to be processed. Reproduction environment MacOS Sequoia 15.3.2 (24D81). definitely doesn't matter. using outlook for mac desktop app, outlook web app Reproduction steps See the attached ics invites - note the only difference is the additional semicolon before BYMONTHDAY in the second invite. Save these as files with the .ics extension, and then open them with outlook. Invalid invite - an event that repeats monthly on the last day of the month starting on May 31st for two months. BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 CALSCALE:GREGORIAN PRODID:adamgibbons/ics METHOD:REQUEST X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT1H BEGIN:VEVENT UID:726df22a-cc8d-4276-9be9-236f4af16450 SUMMARY:Reserved by user DTSTAMP:20260413T225217Z DTSTART:20260531T050000Z DTEND:20260531T060000Z SEQUENCE:0 DESCRIPTION:hi LOCATION:hi STATUS:CONFIRMED CATEGORIES: TRANSP:TRANSPARENT X-MICROSOFT-CDO-BUSYSTATUS:FREE ATTENDEE;ROLE="REQ-PARTICIPANT";CN="user":mailto:user@example .com RRULE:FREQ=MONTHLY;INTERVAL=1;COUNT=2;DTSTART=20260531T050000 Z;BYMONTHDAY=-1; END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR Valid invite - same event but with an additional ; before BYMONTHDAY: BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 CALSCALE:GREGORIAN PRODID:adamgibbons/ics METHOD:REQUEST X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT1H BEGIN:VEVENT UID:726df22a-cc8d-4276-9be9-236f4af16450 SUMMARY:Reserved by user DTSTAMP:20260413T225217Z DTSTART:20260531T050000Z DTEND:20260531T060000Z SEQUENCE:0 DESCRIPTION:hi LOCATION:hi STATUS:CONFIRMED CATEGORIES: TRANSP:TRANSPARENT X-MICROSOFT-CDO-BUSYSTATUS:FREE ATTENDEE;ROLE="REQ-PARTICIPANT";CN="user":mailto:user@example .com RRULE:FREQ=MONTHLY;INTERVAL=1;COUNT=2;DTSTART=20260531T050000 Z;;BYMONTHDAY=-1; END:VEVENT END:VCALENDARBetter Calendar Overlay Views in Outlook
Managing multiple shared calendars in Outlook is currently frustrating. The calendar overlay view is clunky and doesn't offer the flexibility needed to easily compare schedules. Suggested Improvements: Show side-by-side views for multiple calendars in a cleaner layout Allow color coding or highlighting conflicts Support for drag-and-drop scheduling across calendars Toggle visibility with ease instead of navigating menus
Outlook calendar invite manually set accept/decline, can it be done?
Hello All, I've never had this issue but for some reason it's become a problem. I sent out he annual Christmas get together invite in Outlook as a meeting. Didn't get a lot of responses. Followed up with a reminder email. For some reason people started approaching my desk or stopping me in the hall to TELL me they're attending. I'm not sure what the aversion to hitting the accept/decline meeting is but wondered, is there a way to mark a person as Attending a meeting manually? It doesn't warrant delegation etc. but it would help a lot with managing the process if I could track attendees in one place. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance. Andrew
User unable to manage reoccurring meeting they are the organizer of
Hello Tech Community! Hopefully someone else has dealt with this issue and has some insight into the solution. Anyways, One of our users reported that they cannot manage a reoccurring meeting they organized, since they missed one meeting. They are now seen as an "attendee". I have looked all over for resolution, coming to the conclusion that MS does not have the capability for admins to manage calendar events/meetings like this. Here is the original request the user sent: "I had created a reoccurring meeting in October and declined it one week when I wasn’t going to be available. I had accidentally cancelled the meeting from my calendar and I had to have someone re-invite me to the meeting so I could still access it since I was the host. Now I am unable to make changes to the meeting invite, it doesn’t give me the option to edit or cancel it because it’s counting me as an attendee instead of the organizer." We have checked in OWA and desktop app. Same issue. Thank you in advance to any input anyone can provide.
