Color categories on Outlook 2013 sometimes work, sometimes don't

I use color categories for meetings and appointments on my calendar. Sometimes the color category works, other times it has no effect at all. It appears to be related to whether I created the meeting myself or not. If somebody else sent me the invitation, there seems no way to make the color category work. Any ideas? 

T

January 28th, 2015 9:29pm

Hi LP,

In order to understand the issue more deeply, I would like to clarify the following questions:

  1. What type of email account do you use (POP, IMAP, MAPI or Exchange)?
  2. "there seems no way to make the color category work. " - What's the exact symptom? Any error messages
  3. How exactly did you add color category? Could you please share me the steps?

Without the info above, we cannot go further. Please provide more details, then we'll take a further look.

Thank you for your understanding.

Regards,

Ethan Hua

Forum Support

Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
January 29th, 2015 10:41am

Thanks for your reply, please see answers below.

1. Corporate Exchange

2. There is no visible error message.

3. Steps to repro:

On the calendar, right-click on an event. From the context menu, choose "categorize" and click on any color. The context menu is dismissed immediately (with no further mouse click; there's no ok button)

Expected: the event on the calendar should change color immediately. Subsequent check of the context menu shows the color as selected in the list.

Actual: the event shows no color. Subsequent check of context menu shows no color selected in the list.

Anecdotally, my impression over time is that if _I_ created the event, it works. If somebody else created the event, it does not work. I have created a custom color as a test and had the same res

February 3rd, 2015 3:36pm

Hi LP,

Thank you for your response.

Starting with Outlook 2007, color categories are stored in the default message store (mailbox or Outlook data file), I would suggest we first check if there is any corruption in the Outlook data file by running Scanpst.exe tool, which might be causing the issue.

Since you're using an Exchange-based account in Outlook, you can simply rename your .ost file to .ost.old or delete it directly. Re-open Outlook, Outlook will create a new .ost file by downloading your mailbox data from the server. After this, please have a try again and see if issue persists.

Regards,

Ethan Hua

Forum Support

Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
February 4th, 2015 12:33am

Hi,

Just checking in to see if above information was helpful. Please let us know if you would like further assistance.

Regards,

Ethan Hua

Forum Support

February 8th, 2015 8:38pm

Hi,

I'm marking the reply as answer as there has been no update for a couple of days.

If you come back to find it doesn't work for you, please reply to us and unmark the answer.

Regards,

Ethan Hua

Forum Support

Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
February 9th, 2015 10:00pm

Figured this out. When the meeting was created from Outlook Webmail, and later I open the meeting in Outlook desktop, that is when the categories do not work as described.

The workaround is to open the meeting again in Outlook desktop and make some small edit (to the title of the meeting for instance), and then save it. After that, the color categories work normally. This workaround works for meetings that I created as well as for meetings created by others.

(In case you are wondering, I often have to use webmail to create meetings initially because it's the only way to see the scheduling assistant for people's calendar availability. For reasons I won't go into here, this feature doesn't work from the desktop in our installa

February 24th, 2015 9:47am

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