by J. Herman

Created on: December 17, 2011

The calendar in Outlook allows you to setup meetings and appointments without requesting a response from the invited attendees. This is useful if you need to set up meetings for other people. Or if you need to set up a meeting that has a large number of attendees. In this case, you may want to know the number of people attending, but not necessarily who has accepted or declined the meeting. This way you can keep meeting responses from cluttering up your in-box.

You can turn off the meeting request for either Outlook 2007 or 2010 in three easy steps.

To turn off the meeting request when creating a new meeting in Outlook 2007 do the following:

Step 1 - In the Outlook Calendar view, on the Calendar menu, click New Meeting Request.

Step 2 - On the Outlook 2007 ribbon, in the Attendees group, click the Responses icon. 

Be aware that if you've double-clicked on the calendar to create a meeting instead of clicking New Meeting on the ribbon, you'll have created an appointment instead of a meeting. In this case, you must first click on Invite Attendees before you'll see the Responses icon on the ribbon.

Step 3 - After you click on the icon, you will see a drop-down menu. On the drop-down menu, click Request Responses. This clears the check mark next to this item. You can now send out your meeting without requiring a response.

To turn off the meeting request when creating a new meeting in Outlook 2010 do the following:

Step 1 - In the Outlook Calendar view, on the Calendar menu, click New Meeting Request.

Step 2 - On the Outlook 2010 ribbon, click the Response Options icon.

Be aware that if you've double-clicked on the calendar to create a meeting instead of clicking New Meeting on the ribbon, you'll have created an appointment instead of a meeting. In this case, you must first click on Invite Attendees before you'll see the Response Options icon on the ribbon.

Step 3 - After you click on the icon, you will see a drop-down menu. On the drop-down menu, click Request Responses. This clears the check mark next to this item. You can now send out your meeting without requiring a response.

Even if you've already sent out the meeting notices you can still turn off the required responses to a meeting request. Follow the above steps to turn off the meeting requests and then click the Send Update button.

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