Outlook Calendar Top 10 Calendar Tips

1. Respond to meeting invitations or updates from your Email Inbox.

Responding to meeting invitations from the Calendar item itself, and then deleting the email
invitation from your mailbox, could delete the item from your calendar. This may cause you
to miss a meeting.
Note: Although you can create rules to manage meeting-related messages in your Inbox, you should
NOT create a rule to send all meeting invitations to a separate folder. This disables the “sniffer”, a
setting in Outlook that places all meeting invitations in your calendar as a tentative item until you
respond to the invitation from your Inbox. The “sniffer” is a way to help prevent you from missing
meetings even if you have not had the opportunity to respond to a meeting invitation. If you have a
rule that moves the meeting invitations to another folder (either on or off the server), the item will not
be tentatively placed on your calendar and if you fail to respond to the meeting invitation, you could
miss a meeting.

2. Accept the most recent invitation or update (by date/time) if you get multiple updates to
the same meeting or event.
Accepting older updates could cause you to lose important information about changes to the
meeting, such as a different date, time, or location. If you attempt to accept an older meeting,
Outlook will display a message warning that a newer update to the meeting has been received
and that accepting the older update could cause errors on the calendar. If you see this
warning, do not accept the invitation. Instead, look for a newer invitation in your Inbox.

3. Do not choose “Don’t Send a Response” if you are invited to a meeting, unless you are
specifically asked not to respond by the meeting organizer.
Use of the “Don’t Send a Response” option does not update the tracking of your acceptance
in the meeting organizer’s invitation. Instead, choose “Send the response now” or choose
“Edit the response before sending” if you wish to inform the organizer of important
information pertaining to the meeting agenda, attendees, etc.
Note to meeting organizers: You may turn off notification of responses for meetings on an individual
event basis by using the Actions, Request Responses menu item. (It is checked by default. You may
uncheck
it to turn off meeting responses.) Invitees will not be prompted to respond to your invitation,
and the Tracking in the meeting invitation will not be updated. (All invitees except conference rooms
will have a Response of None.)

4. Do not forward meeting invitations you receive to other individuals unless your intent is
only to inform them of the meeting as an FYI.
Forwarding an invitation with the intent of inviting another to the meeting does not inform
the meeting organizer and could cause a “surprise factor.” In addition, if updates to the
meetings are made, such as a change in time or location, the individuals you have forwarded
the meeting to will not receive the updates.
5. Open meeting cancellation notices from your email Inbox and click on “Remove from
Calendar.”
If you simply delete the email cancellation notice, the meeting will remain on your calendar,
potentially causing confusion about your schedule and you will appear unavailable to attend
meetings organized by others during that time.
Note to conference room Calendar owners: Conference rooms auto-accept cancellations. When a
conference room is invited to a meeting that is later canceled, the meeting remains on the conference
room calendar but displays “Cancelled” in the text. Also, the free/busy indicator is changed from
Busy to Free which releases the room.

6. Do not include yourself in a distribution list when sending a meeting invitation.

If you do, and you accept your own meeting invitation, you will become just like any other
invitee and will be unable to change or cancel the meeting.

7. Invite a conference room to a meeting invitation as a Resource if it is a public

conference room (e.g., Code OCI Conference Room 4E37).
If you invite the conference room as a Required or Optional attendee, the conference room
will not be reserved for your meeting if the owner has set the room to AutoAccept; and
therefore, will be subject to scheduling conflicts.

8. Choose the “Send Update to All Attendees” option if you make a change to the date,
time, location, or some other change that attendees need to know about.
If you are only adding or removing attendees, please determine whether you need to inform
everyone on the attendee list. If not, choose the “Send Update Only to Added or Deleted
Attendees” option. This will reduce the receipt of multiple email messages for the same
meeting, which can cause confusion among attendees and inadvertent actions.

9. Choose “Send cancellation and delete meeting” when canceling a meeting.

Simply deleting the meeting without sending a cancellation notice to attendees will only
remove the meeting from your own calendar, and will leave an “orphaned” meeting on the
calendars of the other attendees. They will have no way of knowing that the meeting was
cancelled, or if informed separately, they will have to manually remove the meeting from
their calendars.

10. Choose “Share My Calendar” unless someone else manages your calendar and you
want them to receive copies of meeting-related email sent to you.
If you need someone to have access to your calendar in order to see what you are doing or
where you are, choose “Share My Calendar” and grant Reviewer permissions. You can even
grant other permissions, such as Author or Editor, to allow others the ability to add, edit, and
delete items, if you so desire.
Only if you need someone else to function on your behalf, to receive copies of meetingrelated
email sent to you, OR if you do not wish to receive any email meeting notifications
(invitations, acceptances, declinations, etc.) and you want someone else to handle them for
you, should you grant delegate access instead of Share My Calendar. To grant delegate
access you must use Outlook (on a PC or via Citrix). In Outlook, Delegates can be found
under Tools, Options, Delegates when logged into your account.

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