Help me with my weird Outlook 2010 question?

March 22, 2019 1:10 PM

I use Outlook 2010 at work, and had a strange thing happen with a meeting invitation. I could use some help figuring how this happened and what I need to do so it can’t happen again.

I have a recurring meeting set up with a list of people. Yesterday, everyone on the meeting invite got a “this event has been canceled” notification because one of the people invited, I guess, canceled it? But how were they able to do that? And what do I need to do to prevent this from happening again?

One info point is that I did not use BCC to invite people, is that an issue?

What I want is to be able to invite people to this recurring event, be able to send updates, see that people have said Yes or No for attending, and NOT have anyone else be able to cancel it.

I tried internet searches for this and came up empty, so if there’s even an online tutorial or walk-through I’m missing, that would be helpful too. Thanks so much!

posted by fleecy socks to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

The only thing I can think of is if you have that cancelling user listed as a delegate in your Outlook permissions. Those people can perform certain tasks on your behalf, and if you once (or accidentally) set them up to be able to do that, it could create the scenario you're talking about. Article about delegates
posted by xingcat at 1:17 PM on March 22, 2019

Response by poster: I checked this out and apparently I have no delegates... Thanks for this suggestion though!
posted by fleecy socks at 1:27 PM on March 22, 2019

Did you perhaps set it up from a shared / group calendar rather than from your personal calendar? That's the only way I would think someone else would be able to cancel a meeting other than a delegate. If you set it up from your own calendar, and you're certain you didn't cancel it, might be time for a password reset just to be safe. That seems super weird.
posted by allkindsoftime at 1:44 PM on March 22, 2019

We also use Outlook 2010 at work and it has done this exact same thing. None of us has special administrative privileges and it’s mystifying. I’ll be watching this with interest.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 2:05 PM on March 22, 2019

I don't have special insight into your issue save for the mail server software version you are using (presumably some version of Microsoft Exchange) also plays a role in this.

You didn't ask for this but you should remind your IT folks that your version of Outlook goes out of support in 18 months.
posted by mmascolino at 2:28 PM on March 22, 2019

We had problems like this which seemed to happen when somebody viewed and declined the invitation on an iPhone. I don't know the details; we told everybody to stop dealing with meeting invitations on their phones and it seemed to stop.
posted by Lexica at 9:56 PM on March 22, 2019

Did you send it from your calendar or from the calendar of a meeting room (i.e., a shared resource)?
posted by wenestvedt at 5:36 AM on March 23, 2019

Response by poster: The invitations are from my own account, it’s not shared or attached to a room. This is already so helpful, thank you everyone. It’s heartening to hear that it’s happened to others. I have reached out to our IT folks and also feel fine asking people not to respond on their phone in case that helps.
posted by fleecy socks at 10:22 PM on March 23, 2019