Office Reminders doesn’t remind me.

I asked this question before but didn't get answers that helped, so I'm trying again. Reminders doesn't pop up on my desktop ever, not when a planned event is nearing or even when I boot up. Sometimes it doesn't even register events I've entered in the Calendar. I am literally missing or almost missing appointments because of this. I downloaded Office 2011 in July 2013, so I'm past MS's miserably short warranty period, but Reminders has never worked properly from the get-go. Didn't do anything about it because life was getting in the way, and now it's too late. I have OS X 10.6.8, the OS and Office are always fully updated. As far as I know, Reminders is the only function that doesn't work right, and if it doesn't work it's pretty much useless.