Outlook 2010- figuring out who cancelled a meeting and when

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I fear my boss is setting me up to take the fall for several cancelled meetings. She claims I cancelled them when I shouldn't have. I have not done this, obviously. In fact, I keep a record of all cancellations on my own calendar for this exact purpose. If something "disappears" it is because someone else cancelled or deleted it. I need to find out if there is a way to determine who cancelled a meeting and when. I need to be able to determine this on a calendar that is Shared to me, not on MY calendar. I hope that makes sense. Is this possible?

I am her admin, So I can add, create and cancel meetings on her behalf. I fear she is accidentally or purposefully deleting items off her calendar, not necessarily canceling them. Then when the time comes she wants to know why it is not on her calendar. We are talking dozens of times this has happened. And I know it's not on my end and I can't figure out a way to prevent it in the future.

Best Answer

Meeting cancellations are sent out as emails with a specific outlook form so if your calendar were copied into the meeting request, you would have a record. The cancellation messages are deleted by default once you've acknowledged them but I think you can turn that off in Options.

In your case though, you won't get those since you are only looking at a shared calendar, the owner of the calendar will get cancellations for messages they didn't set up. Entries they originated have no record of deletion except that the calendar form will end up in the deleted items folder until that is cleared out.

One possible approach might be, if you are arranging meetings, to do it from your own mailbox and include the other mailbox as an invitee. Or alternatively, do it the other way around. Create the invite in the shared calendar but include yourself as an attendee. Then you get any cancellation message. Note however that it is possible for a user to suppress any attendee update messages.

The only other options I can think of either involve changing permissions to prevent someone from deleting things or writing a Macro to keep track of actions.

UPDATE: I think you will have to go old-school. Print off her schedule regularly so that you have a printed record of everything and then monitor her calendar closely.

The other thing would be to report the missing entries as a fault to your IT department. Don't tell them about your fears of course, but armed with the print outs push the problem to them. It is possible that they will discover her doing something wrong and then they get to make a fuss rather than you. If you do get evidence of wrong doing, plan on how you would blow the whistle on her but be ready to look for another job.

To be honest, if you don't trust her, you are really in the wrong role anyway - time for something new if you can - though I realise that might not be so easy.

Related Solutions

Outlook – Change Outlook’s default calendar to iCloud (meeting requests end up in wrong calendar)

I had this problem with two PSTs a couple of years ago and the solution was to set up a rule to move the invite (when it arrives) immediately out of the original PST and into a folder inside the other (iCloud) PST.

If you now open the invite from the new location, you should find that any responses should now go into the calendar within that PST and not the original one.

Outlook – How to set Outlook 2010 to automatically remove cancelled meetings

I found the answer by searching the exact question you were asking.

You will have to create a macro with the following source code (Change the mailbox's name to your own):

Set olResCalendar = OpenMAPIFolder("\MailboxName\Calendar")
Sub RemoveCanceledAppointments()

Dim olResCalendar As Outlook.MAPIFolder, olApptItem As Outlook.AppointmentItem, intCounter As Integer

'Change the path to the resource calendar on the next line
Set olResCalendar = OpenMAPIFolder("\MailboxName\Calendar")

For intCounter = olResCalendar.Items.Count To 1 Step -1
Set olApptItem = olResCalendar.Items(intCounter)
    If Left(olApptItem.Subject, 9) = "Canceled:" Then
    olApptItem.Delete
    End If
Next
Set olApptItem = Nothing
Set olResCalendar = Nothing
End Sub

Function OpenMAPIFolder(szPath)
Dim app, ns, flr, szDir, i
Set flr = Nothing
Set app = CreateObject("Outlook.Application")
    If Left(szPath, Len("\")) = "\" Then
    szPath = Mid(szPath, Len("\") + 1)
    Else
    Set flr = app.ActiveExplorer.CurrentFolder
    End If

While szPath <> ""
i = InStr(szPath, "\")
    If i Then
    szDir = Left(szPath, i - 1)
    szPath = Mid(szPath, i + Len("\"))
    Else
    szDir = szPath
    szPath = ""
    End If
    If IsNothing(flr) Then
    Set ns = app.GetNamespace("MAPI")
    Set flr = ns.Folders(szDir)
    Else
    Set flr = flr.Folders(szDir)
    End If
    Wend
Set OpenMAPIFolder = flr
End Function

Function IsNothing(Obj)
If TypeName(Obj) = "Nothing" Then
    IsNothing = True
Else
    IsNothing = False
End If
End Function

Quote from the Page:

This macro will search through a resource calendar and delete items with "Canceled:" in the subject. You also must have proper permissions on the resource mailbox for this to work. This macro will remove cancelled meetings will remove both direct booking and autoaccepted meetings.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Outlook – Change Outlook’s default calendar to iCloud (meeting requests end up in wrong calendar)

Outlook – How to set Outlook 2010 to automatically remove cancelled meetings

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