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I mistakenly declined a single occurrence of a recurring meeting in Outlook. How do I undo this and get the meeting back?

I also had a look at How to get back a declined outlook invitation. But that question does not relate to my problem. As I have declined a single occurrence in a reoccurring event.

I'm using Outlook 2007 on Exchange.

Community
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jjkparker
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  • Was it sent via email or via calendar option? Is it from someone in your organization ON the exchange server, or from someone outside of the organization? – Canadian Luke Jan 30 '12 at 19:32
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    This appears to be a duplicate of [How to get back a declined outlook invitation](http://superuser.com/q/72762/97028). – CharlieRB Jan 30 '12 at 20:33
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    This is not a duplicate, because the linked answer does not explain how to recover from declining a single occurrence to a recurring invite. – Nic Aug 16 '12 at 18:54
  • In the future, when you doubleclick to open the meeting, select just that occurrence, then decline that. I did that and it only removed that one instance for me. – Dan Csharpster Jan 12 '16 at 14:13

8 Answers8

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I just had the same need today (restore a declined occurrence of a recurring meeting not organized by me).

The below procedure worked for me (Outlook 2013):

  1. Go to the calendar view
  2. Double click on a remaining occurrence
  3. Choose to open the "entire series"
  4. Edit the "Recurrence" of the meeting (Ribbon > Meeting Series > Options > Recurrence)
  5. Do a fake change (move something back-n-forth in the settings with no impact on the schedule so that Outlook "thinks" you have changed something)
  6. Close the Recurence dialog (click OK)
  7. "Save & Close" the meeting series

Now all instances should be back.

G-Man Says 'Reinstate Monica'
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Arnaud Meyniel
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  • Out of all the answers, this is the only one which worked for me!! I am using Outlook 2010 – Kidburla Dec 18 '17 at 21:28
  • Ditto. This was the only answer that worked for me and it was FANTASTIC! Saved me a ton of hassle. – DH4 Mar 18 '20 at 02:54
  • Unfortunately I can't find how to edit it in the online version now. – Jan Hudec Jul 01 '21 at 09:13
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    You can only edit the Recurrence of a meeting if you are the meeting owner in O365. If you are an invitee there is no menu to edit the recurrence. – DH4 Jul 13 '21 at 13:57
  • Well although I wasn't the meeting owner, I was able to follow this answer and change a small bit of the occurrences, which recreated the missing instance. So try this, even if you're only an invitee. – Henrique de Sousa Sep 20 '22 at 20:07
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I also could not "undecline," so I went to the sender's calendar, opened the item, and cllicked the button to copy to my calendar. A message popped up and said that to do this, I had to accept the meeting, which I did. Now it's on my calendar. Hope this helps.

Sue Koz
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    Unfortunately I can't view the sender's calendar (or indeed anyone else who is on the invite) :( – Kidburla Dec 18 '17 at 21:12
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    This will only work with public calendars as far as I can tell. It does not work with Shared calendars. – nyarasha Jul 02 '18 at 16:07
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None of the posted answers worked for me. Toggling the recurrence settings seemed promising, but I couldn't find those controls in Outlook web mail. What finally worked for me:

  1. Completely delete the entire series from your calendar (don't send a response to avoid confusing the sender) - Note that merely declining and re-accepting is not enough, you must delete
  2. Go to Deleted Items and find the original series invite
  3. Accept the entire series again
  4. The declined occurrence is now back, along with any other occurrences you had previously declined, so be sure to re-decline any future occurrences you still can't attend
Dana Cartwright
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    This didn't work in Outlook 365. I got all the meeting invites back except the one that was declined. Looks like it remembered the one that was declined. Probably a "new feature". Rats. – DH4 Mar 16 '20 at 15:44
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    Ok, I got this to work with Outlook 365 if you CHANGE your response. I did as the original post suggested but instead of accepting the invite I said "Tentative" and all the instances came back. It also cleared the category that the meeting was in so looks like this does a full-refresh of the meeting invite. – DH4 Jul 13 '21 at 14:19
  • thanks, this worked for me in Outlook 365; Arnaud's answer didn't work. – Jason S Jun 13 '22 at 16:03
  • Did not work for me in O365. just like @DH4 said, it "remembered" which meeting occurrences I had declined. Even when changing my response e.g. from accepted to tentative, they didn't restore. – Kidburla Dec 13 '22 at 18:16
  • This worked for me in Outlook 365 if I (1) deleted the series entirely, (2) revisited the original invite, and (3) toggled that invite from Tentative back to Accepted (selecting not to email the organizer first). Note that the original invitation email was only a couple weeks away from auto-deletion in my Deleted Items folder based on organizational retention configs, so this may not be available if I need this same solution later for the same meeting sequence. – Alan Krueger Jun 07 '23 at 18:55
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Try this (it worked for me).

Note: I did delete all instances of the calendar series before I did this. It is possible that is a necessary step.

  1. Open your Deleted Items folder in Outlook
  2. Find the original invite (if there were updates along the way, ignore those)
  3. Right-click the original item and select Move > Inbox (you may need to select Move > Other Folder > Inbox).
  4. When prompted to send this (for some reason it did not just move), email the appointment to yourself.
  5. When the appointment arrives, click the attachment and select Copy to My Calendar.

Hopefully this will solve the problem for you. In my case it returned all instances back to my calendar and I could delete the one I intended to delete.

Karl Rookey
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  • Did that using "Forward as attachment" (because Move just moved it for me, didn't send it as an attachment), but there was no "Copy to my calendar" option. So, I clicked File -> Info -> Move to Folder -> Copy to Folder -> Calendar. And this opened another appointment with the original series as an different attachment but today's date and time (which were not the original date and time of the meeting). I couldn't "accept" that meeting either, as Outlook thinks I am the organizer of it. This is crazy, I'm giving up. – Kidburla Dec 18 '17 at 21:27
  • This used to work but doesn't work with O365 anymore. It remembers the declined meeting and won't re-add that back to the calendar. – DH4 Jul 13 '21 at 14:01
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Just like the OP, I had declined a single instance of a recurring meeting from an invite I have previously accepted.

Note: Any changes to the series on your calendar will be lost since you have to delete and re-add the series. ...but, that's kind of the point :-)

This just worked for me in Outlook 2016 since I still had the original invite:

  1. Confirm you have the original invite (Deleted Items, Inbox, etc.)
    • This is important for restoring the series on your calendar after deleting it in the next step.
  2. Delete the series from your calendar
    • Choose "No" when asked if you want to send a response to the originator so you aren't spamming them.
  3. Go back to the original invite and choose "Accept" without sending a response to the originator
  4. Check your calendar and all instances in the series will be there (even the one(s) you previously declined)
Mycah
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  • Your answer could be improved with additional supporting information. Please [edit] to add further details, such as citations or documentation, so that others can confirm that your answer is correct. You can find more information on how to write good answers [in the help center](/help/how-to-answer). – Community Jan 05 '23 at 21:10
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It might be in your deleted folder.

wizlog
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Joshua
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    I only found the series in my "deleted items", not the individual occurrence. Not sure if that's what you meant, because your answer contains a broken link. – Kidburla Dec 18 '17 at 21:13
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I know this is really old, but I was able to restore a declined occurrence. Here is how to do it:

  1. Open another person's calendar that is also part of the recurring meeting
  2. Select and drag the occurrence that you want to re-accept (or tentatively accept) to your calendar
  3. At this point you can either Copy Series or Copy Selected Occurrences (Since we just want to re-accept the one occurrence, select Copy Selected Occurences)
  4. You will then get the option to: Accept the meeting, Tentatively accept the meeting or Copy the meeting I am not sure what Copy the meeting will do, I am guessing that it will put it onto your personal calendar, but will not notify the meeting about your status (i.e. you will still show up as Declined)

Hope this helps. This was done on Outlook 2013.

busfault
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  • Unfortunately I can't view anyone else's calendars who are also part of the recurring meeting invite list :( – Kidburla Dec 18 '17 at 21:15
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What worked for me is to copy and paste one of the remaining meetings from the series and then change the date of the copy.

Thomas
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  • Did not work, it showed a message for the copy "This meeting was copied to your calendar and will not receive updates". The options to respond are missing from the copied meeting. – Kidburla Dec 13 '22 at 18:20