Google Calendar stopped sending email notifications
 

Hi. I was advised to post my problem here by a user on another forum.

I have a windows 10 22H2 laptop, latest software and I've used a Google Calendar for years. I use the Calendar mainly on my laptop and usually set the events and Notifications there. I also have an app on my android phone but I use that mainly for viewing.

I regularly set notifications, on events, to generate an email to me (I use Outlook, not Gmail) 1 week, 2 days etc. before the event.

This stopped working recently - perhaps a week or so ago, maybe a bit more.

While testing this, I've found that I do receive pop-up style Notifications on my phone, if I set that type of Notification on an event. But when I set both pop-up and email Notifications on an event, no email is received (or even if I set up just an email Notification).

I've looked at the Notification setting within the Calendar and within Chrome and they look OK.

I've seen, by searching, that this seems to be a widespread problem and I've checked most/all of the suggested fixes with no luck. Perhaps Microsoft created a problem in a recent bug fix release?

Any thoughts? If I'm allowed, I can post screen grabs of my settings.

The email reminders for Google calendar go to your Gmail address. Check your Junk folder in Outlook to see if they are going there. I just received two email reminders at my Gmail address.

Thanks.

As I said, I don't use Gmail and as far as I know I don't have a Gmail address. I always look at my Outlook junk folder and have been checking it even more carefully after this problem surfaced.

Any other thoughts?

If you still have some email reminder you received from Google calendar before it stopped working you can look in the headers to figure out where it was being sent and how it got to your outlook (sent directly there, forwarded from somewhere else such as Gmail). If it used to work there must have been an email address to which the mail was sent and a method that made it appear in your Outlook (Outlook client or Outlook account. These are to different things).

Thanks. Interesting idea. Unfortunately I've been very good at emptying Junk and Deleted Outlook folders.

I've just discovered how to recover deleted emails and found ones going back as far as 14th Sept 2023 but sadly no Notification ones. That's odd because I've just looked at my calendar and I definitely had a few Events with email notifications set after that date.

I'm not quite sure what's going on here. How come I'm not seeing the event emails in my recoverable email set?

Edit: Hold on. I decided to do a search within recoverable deleted emails and sure enough there are loads there now. When I open one, the header says:

Notification: Top up EE Account @ Tue 21 Mar 2023 (XXXXXXXXXX@hotmail.com) where XXXXXXXX is my name.

Then lower down it says:

Google Calendar <calendar-notification@google.com>
​
To: You

Does this help?

BTW, My Notification setting in Calendar is set to Desktop Notifications. Is that correct or should it say Alerts?
​

Are you receiving other emails sent to the address that your Google calendar emails are sent to?

Absolutely. Always have done. It's the only email address I use.

BTW did you see the edit to my last post? You may have missed it.

Thanks.

So we know that Google calendar sent the email notifications directly to XXXXXXXXXX@hotmail.com, and they were received and sown in your inbox in Outlook until some time ago.
Now something has changed, and there are several possibilities.

• Perhaps Google stopped sending these notifications for some reason: perhaps the address was changed in the calendar settings. Perhaps Google has now some policy not to send these notifications to Hotmail or not to send them anywhere.
• Perhaps Google sends them but Hotmail discards them (does not send them to the user's mailbox).
• Perhaps the messages are received by Hotmail but then instead of being delivered to the inbox are somehow integrated into your Microsoft calendar (that perhaps you have and you don't know about).
• Perhaps they are being sent to to your Inbox, and you check it through Outlook client, and the Outlook client is set to handle them automatically and somehow integrate them into its own calendar (a setting might change by some software update).

Perhaps there are other possibilities. I don't know Google calendar and Outlook well enough to rule out other possibilities or to know how to check what is happening (though I use both, but indirectly. I use the Google calendar mainly through Fastmail's calendar, and I have Outlook at work but I rarely open it. I forward all email. I know that sometimes when people cancel events they are automatically erased from my calendar in Outlook without my intervention. But since I have a copy of all my email also forwarded from work to Fastmail I also get the cancelations as email messages in Fastmail, where I setup the calendar to do nothing automatically).

The second assertion is not true. I do get Google calendar notification at Runbox.

Are you certain you have added an email notification for the type of events you want to get an email? In the notification section it has to be labeled "Email" or you won't be getting one.

Thanks guys.

Yes, I'm definitely setting email as the Notification type. I can't post a screenshot but here's a copy/paste of what I set for an event dated tomorrow, to give me Notifications today. I received only the Notification - no email.

Add location

Email 1 days before at 09:00
Notification 1 days before at 09:00

Are you using Outlook.com on the web or the desktop Outlook client, and is it a personal account or a business account? If it is a business account something may have been changed by the administrator in your organization. If you are synchronizing calendars between Outlook and Google I would turn that off and then turn it back on again.

Thanks.

I'm using Outlook.com on the web (via a tab on Chrome).

It's a personal account.

I'm not synchronizing calendars. I use only the Google Calendar and set Notification emails in some of that Calendars events. Worked perfectly for years and now I get only pop-up style notifications.

I've seen so many posts and suggestions about this on the web that I think it's just a very flaky arrangement and I've been lucky it's worked for me for so long.

I'm thinking I should go through all of my future events and add pop-up style notifications to the ones that currently have only email style notifications.

Thanks again.

Works flawlessly for me.
As far as I can tell all email notifications were sent to my Gmail address (and forwarded from Gmail to my main address)