Outlook is a popular email application that is widely used by businesses as well as individuals due to its variety of useful features. Its feature to create appointments is used by users for various purposes, such as scheduling meetings, trainings, interviews, and many more. Generally, appointments in Outlook are stored in the Calendar.
However, recently, many users have reported that their Calendar appointments are missing from Outlook. To resolve this issue, it is quite imperative to find out the reasons first. There are multiple reasons that can lead to such an issue, such as:
- The digital scheduler in Outlook, in general, is in sync with the user’s mobile phone and desktop (laptop). If a user by mistake deletes some appointments on mobile, then such changes will reflect on the desktop application too.
- When set, Outlook moves older data to keep the data size in check. If the missing appointment is an older one, then it might have been moved by Outlook.
- Accidental deletion by the user.
- If auto-archive is enabled, then after a certain time duration, items are sent to the archive folder.
- If you’ve permitted third-party apps or programs to modify your Outlook data, then it may also cause this issue.
Solutions to Fix the Missing Calendar Appointments Issue in Outlook
There are a few manual methods to troubleshoot this issue.
Verify Retention Policy
The retention policies for your mailbox also apply to Calendar. You can verify the retention policy set by the administrator. If it is holding a tag as Delete and Allow Recovery, then it can help you to recover missing or deleted items, including calendars, from the Recoverable Items Folder.
Turn Off Shared Folder Cache
To try to fix the issue of missing appointments, you can turn off the shared folder caching. To do this, follow these steps:
- In your Outlook, click on File > Account Settings > Account Settings.
- Select your account and click on ‘Change’. Then, click on ‘More Settings’.
- Click on ‘Advanced’.
- Uncheck the ‘Download Shared Folders’ checkbox and click on ‘Apply’.
Check Antivirus Program
Sometimes, the antivirus program checks the Outlook content and deletes the items that are found to be suspicious. You can temporarily disable the antivirus program to see if it is causing the issue.
Repair Corrupt PST and Recover Missing Appointments
If the above methods fail to resolve the issue, it means that the missing appointments are the result of PST file corruption. In such a case, you can repair the corrupt PST file using Microsoft inbuilt tool i.e. Scanpst.exe (also known as Inbox Repair Tool). It scans the PST file for corruption errors and fixed them. You can find this utility in the Outlook installation directory.
However, the Scanpst.exe is suitable for fixing minor corruption issues and for PST files up to 2 GB. The tool may fail or hang in between if the data file is large or severely corrupt. While repairing the file, it purges the corrupt items, resulting in data loss. So, it is advisable to take a backup of your PST file before using Scanpst.exe to avoid data loss.
To cover the limitations of Scanpst.exe, you can use advanced PST repair software, such as Stellar Repair for Outlook. The software can easily repair severely corrupt Outlook PST files, without any file size limitations. It recovers all the items, such as emails, calendars, notes, etc. from the corrupted file, including the deleted items. This software is compatible with Outlook versions 2019, 2016, 2013, 2010, and 2007. You can try the free version of the software to evaluate its functionality. After satisfaction, you can choose to buy any of the licensed editions of the program. We suggest you go for the “Technician Edition”, which comes with a full set of features.
Please refer to this blog to recover missing or deleted calendar items in Outlook.
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