Outlook Calendar Best Practices

Various troubles can be avoided by following the calendaring best practices outlined below.

Critical instructions

1. Turn off Cached Exchange Mode for shared folders!

   • This is vital for anyone who creates or edits entries in another person's calendar or shared mailbox.

2. Always respond to calendar events.

   • Accept, Accept as Tentative, or Decline.

3. Schedule End Dates on recurring meetings.

   • Generally, within a year is best.

Other recommendations

• Use the same version of Outlook.

  • Mailbox owners (and any delegates) should be using the same version of Outlook on any computers that are used for calendaring. This should be at least Outlook 365 with the latest updates from Microsoft. If you are a delegate and you have a different version of Outlook than the owner of the mailbox, please contact the Helpdesk to start an installation of the appropriate version of Outlook (see How do I find my Microsoft Outlook version information?)  

  • Obviously, if you are in a mixed environment of Windows, Mac and mobile devices, it is not possible to have the same version of Outlook. In such a mixed environment, each platform should use the same version of Outlook and each device should be using the latest version of its mail software. That is, Windows computers should use the same Outlook version as other Windows computers, Mac computers should use the same version of outlook as other Mac computers, and mobile devices should use the latest version of their email client. Even so, inconsistencies may still happen, either due to the technology or due to one person doing something different.

• Keep the number of delegates to a minimum. This will help prevent unintended changes to a calendar.

• Do not delete a meeting invite without checking that the meeting is already accepted on the calendar, or if it has already been accepted on another device.

  • In general, if you are not attending a meeting, Decline instead of deleting the invitation.

  • If an invite is deleted before the mailbox owner or the delegate has had a chance to respond to it, then the meeting will disappear from the calendar. If you are not sure if the meeting is on your calendar, do not delete it.

  • When a meeting request is received, Outlook will automatically insert a placeholder for that meeting in your calendar before you've had a chance to accept or decline. A picture of this placeholder appears below compared with a picture of an appointment that's been properly accepted. If you see this placeholder, it means that the meeting has not been firmly accepted. If there is still a meeting invite for this meeting in your mailbox, you should respond to it.

      vs 

    Note how the first placeholder is faded in appearance and has a stripe on the left with alternating colors. The properly accepted meeting below has a solid color line and is not faded in appearance.

• Have an agreed-upon procedure for handling meeting invites, especially if there's more than one person with access to a calendar.

  • Only one person should be accepting and declining meeting invites - either the mailbox owner, or a single delegate. If the delegate will be performing this, then the mailbox owner may choose to instruct Outlook to send meeting requests only to the delegate.

  • Instructions for this (caveats included) are listed at the end of this document.

• Take action only from the Inbox.

  • Accept or decline invites from the Inbox, not from the Calendar.

• Don't forward meeting requests.

  • New attendees should be added to the original attendee list by the organizer.

General meeting/event creation

• Do not accept suggestions to create an “event” on your personal calendar if the invitation email message was sent to a large group.

  • If you do, everyone who received the original message will be invited to the event you just created, and they will all receive a cancellation notice if you delete this event from your calendar. If you want this event to appear on your own calendar, you should add it manually.

• Event organizers can use the BCC option in their email to send announcements to large groups of people. See BCC in Outlook and BCC in Webmail.

  • This prevents recipients from accidentally sending a calendar invitation to everyone else, and also prevents accidental reply-all messages.

  • You can still state the groups for which the email is intended in the body of the email.

Other best calendaring practices

• Microsoft: Best practices for Outlook Calendar

• University of Colorado Boulder: Exchange Online Calendaring Best Practices

Delegates

Delegates—those who have access to another person's mailbox—may find use in the following resources:

• Allow messages to be sent on your behalf when sharing a folder or mailbox

• Configure Outlook to only send meeting requests to a delegate, and no meeting requests to the mailbox owner.

It is possible to configure Outlook to only send meeting invites to a delegate and no invites to the mailbox owner. This is not recommended for everyone, as it may cause complications when the delegate is unavailable to process meeting requests. However, instructions for configuring this feature of Outlook are available below:

1. Click the File tab.

2. Click the Account Settings button, then choose Delegate Access.

3. Select the check box My delegates only.