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Responding to Meeting Invitations

Outlook for PC

Learn how to accept, tentatively accept, and decline meeting invitations in the Outlook 2016 for PC desktop application.

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calendar basics

Accepting Meeting Invitations

1. When you receive a meeting invitation, you will see four buttons within that meeting invite: Accept, Tentative, Decline, and Propose new time. Your calendar will automatically detect whether you have any conflicting meetings at this time or not, and will state No conflicts or This event conflicts with another event in your calendar.

2. When you click the Accept button, you will see a drop-down menu with multiple options for responding: Edit the response before sending, Send the response now, Don't send the response.

Edit the response before sending: This allows you to add a message to your event acceptance message.

Send the response now: This sends the automatic response to the meeting organizer that says you have accepted the invitation.

Don't send the response: This will not send any response to the meeting organizer. Note that when you select this option the organizer will not be able to see any acceptance status from you.

3. Select one of the three options in the drop-down menu. Your acceptance will then be sent to the organizer of the meeting and the invitation will automatically moved to the trash folder. 

Tentatively Accepting a Meeting Invitation

1. Click the Tentative button within the meeting invitation.

2. You will see the same drop-down with the same three options as you do when you click the Accept button:

Edit the response before sending: This allows you to add a message to your event acceptance message.

Send the response now: This sends the automatic response to the meeting organizer that says you have accepted the invitation.

Don't send the response: This will not send any response to the meeting organizer. Note that when you select this option the organizer will not be able to see any acceptance status from you.

3. Select one of the three responses to send your tentative acceptance to the meeting organizer. The invitiation will be automatically moved to your Trash.

Declining Meeting Invitations

1. When you Decline a meeting invitation you will see a similar drop-down menu as you do when you click Accept or Tentative.

2. Select one of the three responses from the drop-down menu. This will send your decline message to the meeting organizer and automatically move the invitation to your trash. 

Propose a New Time

1. Click the Propose new time button. You will see a drop-down that provides two options: Tentative and propose new time and Decline and propose new time.

2. Once you select one of the two options, a window will open that looks similar to the Scheduling Assistant. Here, you can propose a different time and date for the meeting at the bottom of the window and see the attendees' free/busy information at those times.

3. When you have selected a new time to propose, click Propose Time at the bottom.

4. A message composition window will appear where you can type a message to the organizer to go along with your proposed time. Click Send to send the meeting organizer the proposed time and the message you have added.