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Outlook 2007 – Cannot Save Free/Busy Information

Hands Up, Baby Hands Up!

Hands up anyone who has upgraded from Outlook 2003 (Office 2003) and suddenly finds that they get this “balloon” whenever they receive or send a meeting request or appointment. Yes? Well, you’re not alone. There are approximately 145,000 Google search results relating to this issue! And if you’re like me you’ll have found that none of the suggested solutions actually work. 🙁 Probably the most comprehensive to date is the series of posts at Wading Through but even they couldn’t help me.

Well worry no more – I have developed a workaround! 🙂 Whilst it doesn’t actually stop the “balloon” from appearing, it does allow your MS Exchange mailbox Calendar to contain the same items as your local Calendar in your PST file. This way other people can see your free/busy status when making meeting requests, whilst you retain a local copy of the requests. Result! (This was the most annoying aspect of this issue for me).

The workaround is surprisingly simple, and involves applying rules for appointments and meetings that are received and sent. In basic form, for every meeting or appointment that you receive or send, move a copy to the Calendar in your online (Exchange) mailbox. In detail, the rules are as below …

Copy Received meetings to Exchange Calendar
Received Meeting Request Rule

Copy Sent meetings to Exchange Calendar (client-only)
Sent Meeting Request Rule

There is one caveat to this suggestion – any meeting updates will appear as separate entries in your mailbox Calendar, so you’d need to delete the old ones. But hey-ho … we can’t get everything. Maybe one day M$ will actually do something about this. 😆 (as if)

I hope you find this useful. 🙂

Ian.

 

Posted by on November 3, 2010 in Techy Stuff

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