Global changed to events?

[Loren Finkelstein]

Somehow, my exchanger server changed all my annual events to invitations
and changed all my free/busy statuses to busy.

Since I have hundreds of birthdays in my calendar, every time someone
checks my availability, I appear to be already busy.

So, my 2 new questions are...

1. Can I select a whole bunch of items and change my free-busy status,
or do I have to do one at a time?

2. Whenever I change an event I get the pop-up "You have made changes
to this invitation..." Can I convert these from invitations to normal
calendar events?

Thanks.
Loren