Everytime I receive a meeting invite it just shows up in the calendar. And I have gone to File/Options/Calendar/Auto Accept or Decline and ensured that the automatically accept option is unchecked

Question

Everytime I receive a meeting invite it just shows up in the calendar. And I have gone to File/Options/Calendar/Auto Accept or Decline and ensured that the automatically accept option is unchecked

Answer 1

Hi Kathleen,

You're seeing the default "Tentative" placeholders. Outlook (and Exchange) reserve the time as soon as an invite arrives so you don't get double-booked.

To stop those placeholders from being created, turn off automatic processing. In Outlook go to File, Options, Mail, scroll to the Tracking section, and clear "Automatically process meeting requests and responses to meeting requests and polls", then select OK and restart Outlook.

New invites should no longer drop onto your calendar until you respond.

Let me know if this works please!

Answer 2

I see, then it's most likely because Exchange's server-side "Calendar Attendant" is still running with AutomateProcessing = AutoUpdate. In that mode, the server adds every new request to your calendar as Tentative before you respond. Turning off the Outlook client option doesn’t disable this server behavior.

Ask your IT Department to switch your mailbox to AutomateProcessing = None. That turns off the server's automatic processing so new invites will stay in your Inbox and won't appear on your calendar until you accept. The change is quick and safe to try, and can be reversed just as easily.

Tell them they can run this in Exchange Online PowerShell:

Connect-ExchangeOnline
Get-CalendarProcessing -Identity "youremail@yourdomain" | fl AutomateProcessing
Set-CalendarProcessing -Identity "youremail@yourdomain" -AutomateProcessing None

Microsoft's cmdlet documentation confirms that AutoUpdate makes requests appear Tentative, and that None disables the calendar attendant for the mailbox.

I'm sorry to not provide a better solution, but on this scenario the only people that can make changes are your M365 administrators/IT Department.

Let me know how it goes!