Optional Attendees In Outlook Meeting Invite
Invite Optional Attendees In Outlook Web

Follow the steps below to mark attendance as optional in a calendar event invite. (Optional) Click Scheduling Assistant to see the availabilities of both the room and the attendees. (Optional) To make the event reoccurring, click Recurrence and set how often the meeting will happen. Once the meeting is set, click Send. Login to your webmail. How do you make meeting attendees optional in Outlook's Calendar? The only way I can find is to bring up the 'contacts' directory search for attendee then I see 3 options for attendee at the bottom of the contacts dialogue box. Is this the only way? Adding/removing attendees. If all you do is changing the attendees for a meeting request, then Outlook will ask you if it should send out the meeting update to all attendees or to send out invites/cancellations to the people who have been added/removed only. You can, however, add recipients as optional attendees. Create a new meeting request. Fill in all the fields you want to predefine such as title, required and/or optional attendees, and location. As an example, I've created this informal one-on-one meeting invite sample: Save the newly created meeting as template. For this, click File Save as, type some descriptive name, and choose to save as Outlook Template (.oft) type.

If you're the meeting organizer, the easiest way to invite someone else to a meeting is to open the meeting from your calendar and add them as an attendee. After you've added the additional attendees, click Send Update. You can choose whether to send the update only to added or changed attendees or to all attendees.

When sending a meeting invitation you cannot add someone as a CC or a BCC to the meeting invite. Use the following instructions that detail how to define optional attendees in the meeting invitation.

How to modify groups using Outlook Web Access (OWA)

Go to your Outlook calendar by clicking on the squares icon in the top-left corner and select Calendar.
In the Outlook calendar click New then select Calendar Event.
In the new meeting window that opens, select Scheduling Assistant.
In the Add Attendees field type in the name of an optional person you wish to add to the meeting.
Right click on the name of the attendee and select Attendance optional.

How to modify groups using the Outlook application

In your Outlook calendar, click on the New Meeting icon in the ribbon.
In the new meeting windows that opens, Click on Scheduling Assistant.
Click on the Add Attendees button at the bottom left of the Attendees list.
In the Select Attendees and Resources window, you can add people as required or optional. Select the person you wish to add click on either the Required or the Optional button to add them to the invite.

Symptoms

When you send a meeting request, you can put Distribution Lists (DLs) on the To line as required attendees. When the recipient accepts this meeting invitation, your original meeting item shows that recipient as an Optional attendee instead of Required.

Optional Attendees In Outlook Meeting Invite

Cause

When Outlook receives a meeting acceptance, the sender of the acceptance is compared to the recipients in the meeting attendee list. If that recipient is not listed, it is assumed to be 'optional' and added to the list of attendees.

Status

This is by design.

To work around this issue in Outlook 2003 or later versions, expand the DL as soon as it is added to the meeting list. If the DL contains other DLs nested in it those will also have to be expanded.

Invite Optional Attendees In Outlook