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Ridding Your Outlook Calendar of Unwanted Meetings
redmondmag.com
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One of the groups I belong to sends out constant meeting requests. There are typically three to five of these requests every single day. Even so, these meetings don't really apply to me, so there is no reason why I have to attend. “The annoying part is that Outlook places these meetings on my calendar even though I have not actually accepted them.” Even though I have been dealing with this particular issue for years, I have never written about it before because I had thus far been able to find a good solution. There are a number of Web sites claiming that the solution is to click on Outlook's File menu, select Options and then click on the Mail tab. From there, deselect the Automatically Process Meeting Requests and Responses to Meeting Requests and Polls check box, as shown in Figure 1. From what I have been able to tell, this solution might have worked at one time, but it seems to be largely ineffective today.
One of the groups I belong to sends out constant meeting requests. There are typically three to five of these requests every single day. Even so, these meetings don't really apply to me, so there is no reason why I have to attend. “And when I need to schedule something myself, I usually end up having to blow out several of the unwanted calendar appointments just to avoid Outlook nagging me about a schedule conflict.” Even though I have been dealing with this particular issue for years, I have never written about it before because I had thus far been able to find a good solution. There are a number of Web sites claiming that the solution is to click on Outlook's File menu, select Options and then click on the Mail tab. From there, deselect the Automatically Process Meeting Requests and Responses to Meeting Requests and Polls check box, as shown in Figure 1. From what I have been able to tell, this solution might have worked at one time, but it seems to be largely ineffective today.
I have found at least a partial solution to the problem of my calendar being filled up with unwanted appointments. This solution isn't perfect, but it is relatively effective so I wanted to share the technique with you. I suspect that variations of this technique might also be useful for getting rid of meeting spam (spam disguised as a meeting request, so that the spam will be displayed on your calendar). “Before I show you the technique, let me just say upfront that so far I have not found a way of keeping unaccepted meetings off of my calendar.” So here is how it works. Open Outlook and switch to Calendar view. Next, select the View tab at the top of the screen and click on the View Settings icon, found on the toolbar. This causes Outlook to open the Advanced View Settings Calendar dialog box, shown in Figure 2. Incidentally, you will notice in the figure how clean my calendar is.
At the beginning of this column, I mentioned that my technique is not perfect. On the surface, the difference between keeping an unwanted meeting off of your calendar and allowing the meeting onto the calendar but automatically hiding it from view might seem trivial. However, there are reasons why the distinction matters. “Another disadvantage is that you will still receive reminders for unwanted appointments.” As you can see, this technique clears some of the clutter, but it isn't perfect. If anyone knows a way of keeping unwanted items off of the Outlook calendar without explicitly having to decline meeting invites, I would love to hear from you.