Reoocuring meeting changes seem to be automatically declined

Patrick Ward 21

Company uses Office 365. I keep having meetings missing from my calendar. In all of the cases, the meetings apparently were reoccurring meetings where one of the meeting was rescheduled for a different date and time. However, I am not declining the change. What is happening? When I am invariably late for the meeting, I get the meeting owner to send me a new meeting. I accept that meeting, and it gives me the warning that I previously declined the meeting, so Outlook definitely thinks I declined it.

My primary Outlook use is a Windows 10 laptop.

The only other piece of information I can share is that I use iPhones and iPads. I typically do not accept or reject meeting requests on my phone. I am wondering if somehow that is part of the problem. Maybe I delete the request on my phone without accepting or rejecting, and that declines the meeting?

Colleen_F_LM 6 Reputation points

2022-01-04T19:25:38.33+00:00

@Patrick Ward , did you ever fix this issue? I am currently experiencing this same EXACT issue and it is driving me crazy - I have missed many meetings and my IT department has yet to figure it out. Thanks for any help you can provide!!
Patrick Ward 21 Reputation points

2022-01-04T21:43:05.607+00:00
Unfortunately this is still happening. This seems to happen when I get an update to a reoccurring appointment - often to add an agenda, though sometimes it is to change the date or time for one of the instances. We thought we had it figured out but it happened again this morning when a meeting dropped that was updated with a new agenda yesterday. I am now using Office 365 on Windows 11 on the beta channel, so it is not an issue with the software install (I upgraded machines).

The thing we thought fixed it:

Open Outlook in the Chrome or Edge browser.

Select the tool icon on the right hand header. This opens "Settings".

Select "View all Outlook settings" at the bottom of the page; this should open a Settings window, with Mail->Layout selected.

Select "Calendar" and then "Events and invitations". There are two options for "Invitations from other people"

Make sure "Delete invitations and responses that have been updated" is not checked (mine was checked)

Thought this was it for sure; and it seemed to help, but things are back to their self-deleting self.

You can also check the configuration that is done through the Outlook app, as shown in the photo from JadeLiang-MSFT. But I didn't have any auto-deleting on. Let me know if you figure this out by posting here, and I will do the same. The only thing I can think of is that it is my iPhone/iPad causing the problem, though I remember accepting yesterday's agenda change while I was on my computer.
Colleen_F_LM 6 Reputation points

2022-01-05T19:53:12.487+00:00

@Patrick Ward thanks for the quick response! Sorry to hear you have not yet found the solution, I was definitely hoping you would have the magic answer. Thanks for sending those steps - I followed them but did not have that item in step 5 checked, so that is not the root cause for me. I still think your suspicion of the iPhone playing in a role in this is probably the cause, but I have no idea how to fix that (and why it wouldn't be happening to others). My IT department is currently engaging with Microsoft on this to try to figure it out, so I will definitely report back here if they find a solution.
Colleen_F_LM 6 Reputation points

2022-01-12T17:50:31.1+00:00
@Patrick Ward I have an update for you! I had a call with Microsoft on Friday and they confirmed it was the iPhone causing the issue. They were able to pull logs of specific meetings where this issue was happening and could show that when the meeting reschedule hit Outlook in my iPhone, the iPhone completely deleted the meeting. They recommended the following:

Update to latest IOS version

Completely remove your company work account from your iPhone and then reinstall it. (For the company I work for this involved deleting and reinstalling the MobileIron app)

The Microsoft agent said that he has seen this issue numerous times before and in many cases the above two steps resolves the issue. However, there are some cases that these steps do not help. In this case, he recommended permanently removing my company account and instead leveraging the separate Outlook app through the iPhone.

I'm only on day 3 of having completed the two steps, but so far have not experienced the issue again. Keeping my fingers crossed this did the trick! Good luck on your end.
asa805 1 Reputation point

2022-11-29T19:57:58.693+00:00

I am also having this issue. Is ANYONE at MS Working on this bug????
Adrien Monvoisin 0 Reputation points

2023-12-08T00:58:54.1266667+00:00
I am having the same issue. I cannot reproduce the bug but something weird is happening...

In ~10% of the case, if someone re-schedule a meeting and I accept the new time, although I accept (and they do receive the acceptance), the meeting no longer shows up in my calendar (and then I miss the meeting obviously). That happened today again. I went back to my 'sent' folder and can see that i accepted. I went to my 'delete' folder and can see the meeting there. it says "we couldn't find this meeting in the calendar. It may have been moved or deleted". If I accept again, i first the get pop-up "This appointment was already declined by [me]. Do you really want to accept it?". If I click yet, then the meeting shows up again in my calendar.

Few things to note:

this was a recurring meeting and this was one of the occurrences that was pushed out 30mn later. But I am pretty sure I had this issue for non-recurring meetings as well

I have a '1mn' send delay rule (so whatever goes out of my outbox is delayed by 1mn. Probably irrelevant but worth mentioning just in case

Any thoughts on what could be the bug? I spend 30mn with an IT guy in my company but we could not reproduce the issue.
CMH-2231 0 Reputation points

2024-06-21T13:42:49.41+00:00

Having the same issue using a Mac with Apple Calendar and Exchange Server.

One of the meetings of a recurring meeting is changed, I accept it, then later the meeting disappears from a calendar and although there isn't a "Decline" sent through mail, when the meeting sender checks the meeting in their calendar, it shows that I've declined it.

2 answers

Jade Liang-MSFT 9,971 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2021-09-03T08:02:54.923+00:00

Hi @Patrick Ward ,

Welcome to our Q&A forum.

What's the specific version of your Outlook 365(File>office account>About Outlook), please first ensure that you have updated to the latest version of Outlook.

the meetings apparently were reoccurring meetings where one of the meeting was rescheduled for a different date and time

Did the issue occurred on any specific meetings that organized by any specific users or on specific date?
And did the new date and time conflict with the time of other meetings in your calendar?

In order to further confirm if you have decline the meeting in Outlook, we could try to search your sent folder via subject to check if any relevant messages there.

As I know, Outlook would auto-accept/deny the meeting once we enable relevant option in Outlook client like below, which may cause your issue, please follow the steps to check if it's also your case(File>Option>Calendar>Automatic accept or decline ).

If that's not your case, please provide us with more information about your issue.

If the response is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and upvote it.
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Patrick Ward 21 Reputation points

2021-09-03T14:31:30.27+00:00

Thanks for the answer. The configuration for "automatically accept" has all three boxed unchecked. So it is not that. The version of the software is Version 2108 Build 14326.20282 Click-to-run.

This is a problem that has been going on for well over a year. Happens all the time. This is the first time I have reached out for help on it.

There were no overlapping meetings with the last time this happened. And I think that is normally true - I am free on my calendar.

This has happened with at least 5 or 6 distinct different meeting organizers.

I did go back and look at my sent folder for the last meeting invite, and it is interesting. The first is on Tuesday when the schedule change was received by me. It says I accepted the meeting. Then the second was on Thursday, when I had her resent the request. That one says I accepted it as well.

The interesting part is that when I accepted the meeting the second time, it said "This appointment was already declined by... Do you really want to accept it?"

That means that the meeting was declined after I accepted it, but before the meeting, and the declining does not show up in my outbox.

My current theory is that the iPhone synch is somehow doing it. I don't typically accept or reject meeting through my phone, but maybe I deleted the invite email after I accepted it on my computer and that triggers it? Is there any way to tell what device declined the meeting?
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Jade Liang-MSFT 9,971 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2021-09-07T06:40:55.343+00:00

Hi @Patrick Ward ,

Thanks for your update.

"This appointment was already declined by... Do you really want to accept it?"

Was the appointment shown in this promt declined by you or someone else? And what's the account that you are working with(Microsoft 365 account, Exchange On-premises account or others)?

If the meeting was declined by others, as I know, if you are working with Exchange account and set the Delegate in Outlook, that user could accep/decline the meeting on behalf of you(File>Account settings>Delegate Access).

If the meeting was declined by yourself, looks like it was declined on other devices, for your requirement of finding the way to confirm what device declined the meeting, if you are working with Microsoft 365 account, Exchange On-premises account, we could contact mailbox administartor to track the messages sent by you and compare the send ip like below.
For Microsoft 365: Get-MessageTrace
For Exchange on-premises: Get-MessageTrackingLog

If you couldn't contact them now, in order to further confirm it, it's recommended to log out of your account from other devices for testing.

Patrick Ward 21 Reputation points

2021-09-08T15:57:40.65+00:00

We tracked all messages sent from my account to one of the problem meetings. All messages were acceptance. Because this was a holiday meeting, I have four more instances of this happen when people rescheduled Monday meetings and they disappeared from my calendar. Interestingly, the meetings were still on my phone, just missing from my desktop.

Jade Liang-MSFT 9,971 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2021-09-10T09:19:18.847+00:00

Thanks for your reply.

Looks like your meeting was declined in other client with no response. Have you checked the delegate settings of your mailbox as I mentioned above? And I still would like to confirm if the name in the prompt is your name or other user's name.

According to my tests, if I set a delegate named "Jeff", then I and my delegate would receive the meeting request and update, if the delegate decline the meeting with no response, the meeting organizer would not recognize it, which is similar with your case, please kindly check it.

Jade Liang-MSFT 9,971 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2021-09-16T08:12:03.243+00:00

Hi @Patrick Ward ,

Have you checked the information before? And do you have any questions about it?
If you still need further assistance, please provide us with more information .
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Reoocuring meeting changes seem to be automatically declined

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