Cortana Reminders not working in Windows 10/11 [Fixed]

Cortana is a digital assistant that supports both Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 10 on your PC. Cortana is able to do many things including managing and providing you reminders.

To avoid forgetting important things, you can just command Cortana and it sets a reminder like Hey Cortana! Remind me to send the email at 7 PM and she will set a reminder for you.

On the other hand, no innovation is entirely perfect. While Cortana reminders are explicitly awesome, they have some issues such as:

• Once you have set a reminder, it is not possible to edit it. You have to delete it and set it all over again.
• If you try to set a reminder by giving complex statements like locations, it ends up saying, Couldn’t create the reminder. Please try again later.
• Sometimes due to the constant background listening, you might choose to turn Cortana off. When you turn it back again you might find the reminders are not working. This can be solved by restarting or by signing out and in of the device.
• And the least bothering issue is that the reminder doesn’t show up in Cortana’s History after completion.

Apart from these, there might be issues where you can’t figure out why your Windows are not working. Even after the reminder is not, we don’t get any notification regarding and sometimes we get the notification when we next set it up. As a solution, there is something that you can try and fix this issue.

What to do if Windows 10 Cortana reminders stop working

Table of contents: 

1. Check Cortana’s Reminders section
2. Turn the Calendar on
3. Check the antivirus configuration
4. Check your Account Settings
5. Turn Location on
6. Check Regional settings
7. Run the Apps Troubleshooter
8. Reset Cortana
9. Tweak Registry
10. Run the SFC
11. Run the DISM

1. Check Cortana’s Reminders section

You need to check is if you really have saved any reminders or not. To do that, just open Cortana and then open the reminders section. This will show you the list of reminders that you have set.

If the list is empty, then there were no reminders set at all.

2.  Turn the Calendar on

If you are not receiving notifications based on the date and time, it is a possibility that your reminders calendar is off.

Go to Calendar, search for the settings. In the display, go to Remind me, and tick the checkbox beside Reminders.

4. Check your Account Settings

1. Open the start menu and open Settings.
2. Now go to the Accounts section and open it.
   
3. Now open the Family & Other Users settings and then click on Add someone else to this PC.
   
4. This will help you in adding a new user to your PC with their Outlook account.

This is necessary since, in the case of person-based reminders, you might have accidentally deleted the contact or used an account without the contact’s name.

5. Turn Location on

1. Open the start menu and then open Settings.
2. Now open the Privacy section inside Settings and now you will be on a new screen.
   
3. Now click on Location and turn it on from the slider shown in the image above.

When it comes to a location-based reminder, the error occurs because either you are not connected to the internet or your location is off, so this solution should be helpful.

6. Check Regional settings

First things first, let’s make sure Cortana is supported in your region. Because if it’s not, well, you won’t be able to use it.

This is the list of supported regions and languages:

• Australia: English
• Brazil: Portuguese
• Canada: English/French
• China: Chinese (Simplified)
• France: French
• Germany: German
• India: English
• Italy: Italian
• Japan: Japanese
• Mexico: Spanish
• Spain: Spanish
• United Kingdom: English
• United States: English

If you were able to use Cortana seamlessly before the update, and now it’s not available, there’s a great chance that something with your Region settings is wrong.

Either you have installed an unsupported language by mistake or the installation changed the settings on its own. In both cases, you can resolve this issue in a few easy steps.

1. Open Settings.
2. Go to Region & Language.
3. Under the Country or Region drop-down menu, select one of the supported regions/countries.
4. Now, go to Speech.
5. Under the Speech language drop-down menu, select one of the supported spoken languages.
6. Restart your PC and the Cortana should be placed on the taskbar after the system is up.

7. Run the Apps Troubleshooter

1. Go to Settings.
2. Head over to Update & Security, then Troubleshoot.
3. Find Windows Store apps, and click Run the troubleshooter.
4. Follow further on-screen instructions.
5. Restart your computer.

Although Cortana comes integrated with Windows 10, it still counts as an app. This is why we can use Windows 10’s built-in troubleshooter to resolve potential problems with it.

8. Reset Cortana

1. Go to Search, type powershell and run Windows PowerShell as administrator.
2. When PowerShell starts, run the following command: Get-AppXPackage | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($_.InstallLocation)AppXManifest­.xml

9. Tweak Registry

1. Go to Search, type regedit, right-click regedit and choose Run as Administrator.
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USERSOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionSearch.
3. Change the BingSearchEnabled value from 0 to 1.
4. Make sure all of the Cortana flags are set to 1 instead of 0.
5. Restart PC and check out Cortana again.

There’s a chance something inside your system actually disabled Cortana. So this would be the best way to re-enable Cortana.

10. Run the SFC

1. Right-click on the Start Menu button, and open Command Prompt (Admin).
2. Enter the following line and press Enter: sfc/scannow
3. Wait until the process is done (it may take a while).
4. If the solution is found, it will automatically be applied.
5. Now, close the Command Prompt and restart your computer.

The SFC scan is a command-line tool that scans your computer for potential problems and resolves them (if possible). So, maybe it will be helpful in this case.

11. Run DISM

1. Open the Command Prompt as shown above.
2. Enter the following command and press Enter:
   • DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth
3. Wait for the process to finish.
4. Restart your computer.
5. In case the DISM can’t obtain files online, try using your installation USB or DVD. Insert media and type following command:
   • DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth /Source:C:RepairSourceWindows /LimitAccess
6. Make sure to replace the ”C:RepairSourceWindows” path of your DVD or USB.
7. Follow further on-screen instructions.

This is an alternative to the previous solution. DISM stands for Deployment Image Servicing and Management, and as its name says, it deploys the system image all over again, including Cortana.

If you still experience any other errors other than those regarding the reminders, feel free to contact us in the comment section so that we will help you solve them and add them up to the above list.

If you want to read more about Cortana, see our dedicated Cortana section.

For even more useful articles, go to our Windows 10 Troubleshooting Hub.