How to stop Outlook automatically accepting calendar invites

Outlook has many features that have been added for the users assistance and organisation. One of those built-in default features is that it scans your emails to find any invites, meetings or events coming up and then adds them to your calendar. Although your information is not shared, Outlook uses this feature to keep you organised by adding the events to your calendar automatically. This may be a great function for some users, however, others may not like the constant reminders and the space it takes up on their calendar, especially if they use their calendar for a specific purpose only. In this blog post, I will be highlighting how to stop Outlook from automatically accepting calendar invites.

Stop Outlook from automatically accepting calendar invites: 

1. Sign in to Outlook using your credentials
2. Click on ‘File’
3. Select ‘Options’
4. Click on the ‘Mail’ tab 
5. Scroll down to ‘Tracking’
6. Disable/ uncheck ‘Automatically process meeting requests and responses to meeting requests and polls’
7. Click on ‘OK’

Why does Outlook calendar automatically accept calendar invites? 

The Outlook calendar is designed to organise all your daily, weekly and monthly calendars into one place by mainignand scheduling your taks, events, meetings and activities. It is also designed to save you time by tracking any repeated or recurring events you may have and adding them in automatically so you have to do it manually every time. 

In addition to this, there is another feature that is linked to the calendar that sends alert messages to the user’s inbox to notify them of upcoming events and meetings that are scheduled onto their calendar. This allows the user to keep track of time and meet deadlines. Although this feature is designed to keep the user organised and promote productivity, some users may not like this feature and instead, find it quite distracting. For those users, below is an easy to follow guide on how you can turn this feature off so that events and invites can no longer be automatically accepted.

Step by step process to Stop Outlook from automatically accepting calendar invites: 

1. Sign in to Outlook using your credentials

For this tutorial, I will be signing in to Outlook using an example account 

2. Click on ‘File’

From the panel at the top of the page, click on ‘File’

3. Select ‘Options’

When the window for Account settings opens up, select ‘Options’ from the bottom left hand side of the window. 

4. Click on the ‘Mail’ tab 

Once the options window has opened, select the ‘Mail’ tab from the left hand side

5. Scroll down to ‘Tracking’

From the list of settings, scroll down to the settings for tracking.

6. Disable/ uncheck ‘Automatically process meeting requests and responses to meeting requests and polls’

Click on the box for ‘Automatically process meeting requests and responses to meeting requests and polls’ to uncheck the option

7. Click on ‘OK’

Finally, click ‘OK’ to apply the changes. Outlook will no longer be able to automatically add or accept calendar events.

Thanks for reading, if you have any further questions about the Outlook calendar or any other general questions, feel free to leave a comment or read some of our other blog posts about Outlook:

• How to Automatically CC or BCC yourself in Outlook 365

This blog post outlines how to create a new rule for your inbox to allow you to automatically BCC or CC yourself into emails that you send. This is a great way to stay on top of your emails and ensure that you remember to respond and follow up on certain emails. 

• How to fix Outlook continually asking for credentials?

Due to errors, there may be times when Outlooks personal information manager doesn’t work as well as expected and keeps asking for a password. This blog post looks at the possible reasons behind why Outlook keeps asking for your password and ways to fix this issue.

• How to add a delegate to your inbox in Outlook 

When adding a delegate to your inbox, rather than giving them complete access over your inbox, it is a better option to consider why they are being added as a delegate and then choose the permissions they need to allow them to carry out their tasks. This blog post demonstrates how to do this. 

• How to share a M365 calendar with an external user?

One of Outlook’s unique abilities is the ability to share the 365 calendar with external users. This blog post looks at this feature in more detail and outlines a step by step guide on how to share this content externally.