It appears to be an issue with Windows 7 (Win7), not Outlook. By default,
Win7 combines the taskbar buttons. By doing so the Reminder gets embedded
into the "grouping" behind the Outlook icon. This makes the reminder
difficult to notice.

If you change the "Taskbar buttons" setting under the "Taskbar and Start
Menu Properties" to "Never combine," then the grouping separates and the
reminder pops-up in front of whatever else you have open.

However, one of the great new features of Win7 is this nice, clean taskbar
grouping. So it becomes a matter of sacrifice in order to get this to work
correctly.

I'm hoping that Microsoft comes up with a fix for this, as I'm sure more and
more people are going to become annoyed.


"Alan B" wrote:

I am having this same problem. My Outlook alerts only appear if I have an
Office application up.
I have a colleague who doesn't have this problem. I noticed that my taskbar
looks different than his. Mine has the newer Windows 7 look with square
icons, while his looks more like the traditional Windows XP look with icon
and name of the application next to it. I don't know if this is related or
not.

I've also found that my IM alerts aren't as noticeable in Windows 7.