How do I stop the “note to self” birthday email reminders?

Question

How do I stop the “note to self” birthday email reminders?

Jake Dobbin 0

I have been receiving emails on outlook for years reminding me of Facebook friends birthdays They’re titled “Note to Self: John Smith’s Birthday”. I presume I must have allowed Facebook to sync with my Outlook calendar at some point many years ago, but I just want them to stop now. I have tried changing the notification settings on Facebook, that didn’t work. When I look at my actual Callander in outlook, none of the birthdays appear on it. How do I stop these emails??

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Answer 1

Hello @Jake Dobbin

Since these are old Facebook birthdays and you don't see them in your current calendar, first check whether legacy birthday data is still linked to your Outlook.com account.

Try this from Outlook.com in a web browser:

Go to Calendar > Add calendar > Birthdays and temporarily turn on the Birthday calendar.
Under My calendars, open Birthdays and check whether those old Facebook birthdays now appear.
If they do, delete the unwanted birthday entries. Microsoft confirms that birthday events are tied to birthday information associated with Outlook contacts.
Also check My calendars and Other calendars for any old Facebook, imported, subscribed, contacts, or birthday calendar and remove/unsubscribe from it if present.
Once you've removed the unwanted entries, you can turn the Birthday calendar back off.

Social-network contacts connected to Outlook could populate the Birthday calendar, so changing Facebook's notification settings today may not remove birthday information previously imported into the Microsoft account.

If none of those birthdays appear after temporarily enabling the Birthday calendar, but the emails continue, this may be legacy account-side birthday/calendar data that isn't exposed through the current Outlook.com UI. A recent Microsoft Q&A case describes essentially the same behavior with old Facebook birthdays and “Note to Self” emails. In that situation, Microsoft recommended contacting Outlook.com support if the visible birthday and subscribed calendars don't contain the entries.

As a temporary workaround, you could also create an Outlook.com rule matching messages from your own address with “birthday” in the subject and move them to Deleted Items. Treat this as a workaround, not the actual fix.

References:

Add a birthday calendar and reminder in Outlook

Calendar settings in Outlook on the web

Note to Self: How does it work?

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