iOS13 Reminders - Outlook Task Categories Disappearing

Since upgrading to iOS 13.4 last week, my Tasks have been sync'ing to Reminders quite happily without any loss of categories etc. So it looks like whatever it was has been fixed in this latest release!

A quick update. This is definitely related to the Apple Watch. If my Watch (series 3 running WatchOS 6.2.1) is off at 09:00, the categories don't disappear. If my Watch is on, they do. What's more, any status such as "Waiting for" against a Task is wiped out at 09:00 along with the categories.

I think this has something to do with the Today Notification feature added to Reminders at iOS 13. By default this runs at 09:00, and it's as though this is still doing something to update the Tasks at 09:00, even if it is switched off in Settings. When this syncs to Exchange, the Tasks are updated, minus Categories which, of course, Reminders doesn't support. You can see the Tasks are being updated at 09:00 (by looking at the Modified Date through Outlook).

Further, even with my Watch switched off, if Reminders on my iPhone are lagging behind a bit with changes made elsewhere (and let's face it, they normally are), at 09:00 the version on my iPhone is "merged" with the version on my Exchange account. For example, if I remove a Category on the Exchange Task and replace it with another, but the change hasn't yet sync'ed to my iPhone, at 09:00 the Category re-appears against the Task, alongside the replacement.

So, in summary, I think the sync'ing of Exchange Tasks to iPhone and Watch is pretty much screwed, and I have no idea how to log this with Apple. And since turning off my Watch just before 09:00 every day is not really an option, I guess I'm back to switching off Reminders sync for my Exchange account until a fix arrives.

Hi Joseph_S. Thanks for trying to help, but the link provided is exclusively about iCloud for Windows. My problem doesn't involve iCloud nor anything to do with a Windows PC, so I'm not sure what the relevance is? As stated, my problem is with an iPhone running iOS 13 sync'ing Reminders with Tasks on an Exchange account.

Hi RobHemsley. Thanks for adding your experiences - I'm glad I'm not the only one seeing strange behaviour! It's difficult to see a pattern in any of this weirdness but hopefully somebody from Apple can explain it and, more importantly, fix it.

I think I spoke too soon. I happened to look at about 09:10 this morning and noticed that all categories on Tasks due today had disappeared again. So obviously not fixed, even though everything has been fine for a week.

One thought - does anybody else with the issue also have an Apple Watch? I had been having sync'ing issues with my Watch ever since the upgrade to iOS 13.4/WatchOS 6.2 last week, but these seemed to resolve themselves yesterday (I removed a large number of "completed" Tasks which may or may not have fixed my sync'ing problem). And then today the categories disappeared at 09:00 again - coincidence?