Automatic Accept and Decline

Question

Why "Automatically accept meeting requests and remove cancelled meetings" is mandatory in order to enable the other two options?

In the screenshot I've uploaded there are three options and the second two cannot be selected unless the first one is selected too. Why?

Answer 1

Dear Carcangiu Simone,

Good day!

Thank you for posting to Microsoft Community. We are happy to assist you.

For your question "Why "Automatically accept meeting requests and remove cancelled meetings" is mandatory in order to enable the other two options?"

Because the second two feature options rely on the first "Automatically accept meeting requests and delete canceled meetings" feature. This means that when you enable this feature option, by default Outlook will accept all meeting/appointment requests, but if the accepted meeting/appointment conflicts with an existing meeting, Outlook automatically decline the meeting/appointment request. And, if the accepted meeting/appointment request is a recurring meeting, it will also automatically decline. Another reason is that if the canceled meeting is not automatically removed from the calendar, when the Outlook system checks the calendar to accept/decline a new meeting request, it will assume that this canceled meeting is still active on the calendar, so if the new request conflicts with this canceled meeting, the Outlook system will automatically decline the new meeting request. Therefore, in the meantime, to prevent this confusion and conflicts with the system and make the calendar run smoothly and without problems, enabling this option is mandatory.

However, thank you for bringing this to our attention, your concern is very meaningful and reasonable. So, we will surely raise your concerns to our Product Development Team and hopefully this can be included in the future updates. In the meantime, we sincerely recommend you post your concern as an idea to our Outlook feedback site via Outlook · Community (microsoft.com), our Product Development Team are committed to enhancing the customer experience by continually examining suggestions to include in the design and development of future product upgrades based on your suggestions. Hopefully your suggestion will help many users in the future. Thank you for your time and understanding.

We look forward to you update. Please feel free to let us know if there are any questions or if we've got you wrong. We will keep assisting you based on the information you provide. We sincerely appreciate your patience and cooperation.

Stay safe and healthy.

Have a nice day!

Sincerely,

Libeamlak | Microsoft Community Moderator