Reappearing recurring meetings

[outlook user]

Using Outlook 2003, I have a lot of recurring meetings and they have usually
have 6 month to 12 month recurring cycles. Lately when I delete an occurence
of one of these meetings and send out the update, sometime later the meeting
reappears on my calendar. All of the attendees and the resource get the
deletion notice and the meeting doesn't reappear for them.

Any ideas?

 

[Ace Fekay [MVP]]

In

Using Outlook 2003, I have a lot of recurring meetings and they have
usually have 6 month to 12 month recurring cycles. Lately when I
delete an occurence of one of these meetings and send out the update,
sometime later the meeting reappears on my calendar. All of the
attendees and the resource get the deletion notice and the meeting
doesn't reappear for them.

Any ideas?

If they're appearing just in your calendar, why not just directly delete
them without sending out an update? You can also go into View, Arrange By >
Categories. Then organize alphabetically and find them all in one list,
highlight them and delete them.


--
Regards,
Ace

This posting is provided "AS-IS" with no warranties or guarantees and
confers no rights.

Ace Fekay, MCSE 2003 & 2000, MCSA 2003 & 2000, MCSE+I, MCT,
MVP Microsoft MVP - Directory Services
Microsoft Certified Trainer

For urgent issues, you may want to contact Microsoft PSS directly. Please
check http://support.microsoft.com for regional support phone numbers.

Infinite Diversities in Infinite Combinations

 

[outlook user]

I know that once the meeting reappears I can delete it without sending an
update. But that only works if I remember that I deleted it. I'm more
interested in why the meeting comes back and whether it has something to do
with product limitations orif there's some way for me to change my meeting
invites to stop these from reappearing.

 

[Diane Poremsky [MVP]]

Are you using cached mode? How long between the delete and reappearance?



** Please include your Outlook version, Account type, and Windows Version
when requesting assistance **

 

[outlook user]

I am using cached mode. The time span between deletion and reappearance is
typically an hour or two later.

 

[Ace Fekay [MVP]]

In

I am using cached mode. The time span between deletion and
reappearance is typically an hour or two later.

Do you have any delegates set for your calendar? Have you been given
permissions to someone else's calendar?

Ace

 

[Ace Fekay [MVP]]

In

I am using cached mode. The time span between deletion and
reappearance is typically an hour or two later.

Oops, a few more questions.

Who is the meeting organizer of this meeting?
Are you receiving reminders for these meetings too? If so, do you snooze or
delete them?
Since the profile is in cached mode, are you getting synchronization errors?
Do you have a handheld connected to your mailbox (BB or Windows Mobile)?


Ace

 

[Roby]

I am seeing the same behavior happen to multiple users in our enviornment,
though it is not consistent and I have not been able to recreate. The
following occurs:

-When a change is made to one occurrence of a recurring meeting (the date or
time is changed), at some point it will revert back to the original date/time
on the organizer's calendar.
OR
-If one occurrence is deleted, the meeting will reappear" on the organizer's
calendar.

This doesn't happen every time one occurrence is changed or deleted. The
common thread so far is that the people who have reported this are delegates.
They manage the meetings of someone else's calendar. The item reverts back
to the original time on the person's calendar they manage (or reappears in
the case where one occurrence is cancelled).
I have been actively troubleshooting in an attempt to recreate this
behavior. Most users are outlook 2007 SP1 but in one case the delegate and
executive are using Outlook 2003. Exchange environment is exchange 2003 SP2.
No one is using cache mode. All users involved also have Treos (GoodLink)
or Smartphones (Windows Mobile), but do not process any meeting requests on
these devices.

Still troubleshooting....has anyone else seen this behavior?

 

[Ace Fekay [MVP]]

In

I am seeing the same behavior happen to multiple users in our
enviornment, though it is not consistent and I have not been able to
recreate. The following occurs:

-When a change is made to one occurrence of a recurring meeting (the
date or time is changed), at some point it will revert back to the
original date/time on the organizer's calendar.
OR
-If one occurrence is deleted, the meeting will reappear" on the
organizer's calendar.

This doesn't happen every time one occurrence is changed or deleted.
The common thread so far is that the people who have reported this
are delegates. They manage the meetings of someone else's calendar.
The item reverts back to the original time on the person's calendar
they manage (or reappears in the case where one occurrence is
cancelled).
I have been actively troubleshooting in an attempt to recreate this
behavior. Most users are outlook 2007 SP1 but in one case the
delegate and executive are using Outlook 2003. Exchange environment
is exchange 2003 SP2. No one is using cache mode. All users involved
also have Treos (GoodLink) or Smartphones (Windows Mobile), but do
not process any meeting requests on these devices.

Still troubleshooting....has anyone else seen this behavior?

I see this off and on in our organization. It's sometimes kind of tough when
multiple people have delegates especially with the Editor Role. When it gets
removed, it may be popping up on someone else's that gets copies of meeting
requests as a delegate and they might be either accepting it or the account
is set to autoaccept. So more than likely it's coming from a delegate or the
owner of a calendar. One of the delegates or owner's calendar could be
skewed. In one instance with 6 users, I went around to all 6 and started
outlook with the /cleanreminders switch to clean it up.

Sometimes the easiest way to delete a recurring meeting is simply go to the
room and delete it there and send out the meeting cancellation/deletion.

On another note, I've also found some users had delegates for users that
were deleted from AD, but Outlook is not that smart to delete a user if the
account was deleted in AD. It shows up as NTUser:domain\alias. Also if there
was a Send On Behalf set in an account's AD properties, and that account was
deleted, it will remain in the other person's account properties and still
show up in Outlook Tools/Options/Delegates tab. It must be deleted from the
AD account properties first.

Ace

 

[Roby]

Thanks for the info, but in our case I don't think it has to do with multiple
delgates. Since the issue has been happening for months, we have made sure
the execs have only one delegate, and only that delegate has access to the
calendar, and they are set up so that only the delgate receives meeting
responses. So no more than one person can process meeting requests.
Auto-accept is not configured for niether the organizers, nor any of the
recipients.

People have deleted the entire meeting series and recreated a new recurring
meeting series, and at some point this problem will surface again. In some
cases, there is only one invitee (like 1/1 meetings) and this problem can
still occur. I think most of the meetings do not have an end date, which is
not good practice.

I am inclined to think that it may be related to the mobile phones, like
perhaps some sort of sync issue that is placing the meeting back on the
Outlook calendar. But since I cannot reproduce, it makes it difficult to
troubleshoot, though it is a highly visible problem affecting CEO, CIO, etc.
They will show up for meetings that have been cancelled, or show up for
meetings at the wrong time so the problem is becoming quite critical.

I have opened a ticket with MS. In fact, this company has opened 3
different tickets for this issue but not resolution yet.

 

[Ace Fekay [MVP]]

In

Thanks for the info, but in our case I don't think it has to do with
multiple delgates. Since the issue has been happening for months, we
have made sure the execs have only one delegate, and only that
delegate has access to the calendar, and they are set up so that only
the delgate receives meeting responses. So no more than one person
can process meeting requests. Auto-accept is not configured for
niether the organizers, nor any of the recipients.

People have deleted the entire meeting series and recreated a new
recurring meeting series, and at some point this problem will surface
again. In some cases, there is only one invitee (like 1/1 meetings)
and this problem can still occur. I think most of the meetings do
not have an end date, which is not good practice.

I am inclined to think that it may be related to the mobile phones,
like perhaps some sort of sync issue that is placing the meeting back
on the Outlook calendar. But since I cannot reproduce, it makes it
difficult to troubleshoot, though it is a highly visible problem
affecting CEO, CIO, etc. They will show up for meetings that have
been cancelled, or show up for meetings at the wrong time so the
problem is becoming quite critical.

I have opened a ticket with MS. In fact, this company has opened 3
different tickets for this issue but not resolution yet.

Handhelds do pose an interesting issue with calendaring functions. Do the
meetings exist on the handhelds? If they are, I would suggest to delete
them. When I started tt our organization (I'm actually a contractor assigned
to a 5000 user system), there were numerous reports of meetings "falling
off" the calendars. I would laugh and ask them did you look around on the
floor? Seriously, it comes down to a delegate receiving an invite, they
would accept it, the owner would see the invite and think or know they're
delegate accepted it already and delete it. Once deleted, it removes it from
the calendar. Same with handhelds (BBs & WM). I simply tell them accept
everything to avoid the issue.

But the recurring ones can be tricky to sleuth out. I may suggest (not sure
if you've already knew or tried this), select the Calendar, goto View,
Arrange By, Category. Organize them by date or topic and find the offending
ones. They're listed as one item, meaning a recurring meeting is listed as
one item with a start and stop date. Just delete it and put the View back to
Day/Week/Month. I also use this view to help folks delete large attachments
in meetings, which go against their mailbox limits. You would need to add
the Size field to get that.

Good luck!

Ace

 

[Ace Fekay [MVP]]

In

In

Handhelds do pose an interesting issue with calendaring functions. Do
the meetings exist on the handhelds? If they are, I would suggest to
delete them. When I started tt our organization (I'm actually a
contractor assigned to a 5000 user system), there were numerous
reports of meetings "falling off" the calendars. I would laugh and
ask them did you look around on the floor? Seriously, it comes down
to a delegate receiving an invite, they would accept it, the owner
would see the invite and think or know they're delegate accepted it
already and delete it. Once deleted, it removes it from the calendar.
Same with handhelds (BBs & WM). I simply tell them accept everything
to avoid the issue.
But the recurring ones can be tricky to sleuth out. I may suggest
(not sure if you've already knew or tried this), select the Calendar,
goto View, Arrange By, Category. Organize them by date or topic and
find the offending ones. They're listed as one item, meaning a
recurring meeting is listed as one item with a start and stop date.
Just delete it and put the View back to Day/Week/Month. I also use
this view to help folks delete large attachments in meetings, which
go against their mailbox limits. You would need to add the Size field
to get that.
Good luck!

Ace

I forgot to mention, check the room itself too by changing the View options.

Ace

 

[JGT]

I have a similar issue with Outlook 2003. I originally created a recurring
appointment by copying an existing appointment. I then opened the new
appointment made the hour changes, made it a five day recurring appointment
(Mon-Fri), copied my wife on the appointment. At this point all was OK.

The meeting was canceled, I selected the first occurance, pressed delete,
selected delete all occurances and send a notice. The appointment was removed
from my calendar and the notice was sent. When my wife applied it to her
calendar it appears as an entry with "Canceled" in each of the days. QUESTION
- Is there an option that would just automatically remove the entry. IMHO if
the meeting was canceled it should be removed.

Back on my system the meeting recurrs several times (e.g. I see the same
meeting notice 10-20 or more times for Mon-Fri - all five days). I delete all
occurances from my system without sending a notice and a few hours later or
the next day when I look at my calendar it is again there more than 10 times.

Any suggestions? Reading through the post for this issue I don't see any
suggestions or solutions.

 

[JGT]

I should also mention
(1) I'm running Outlook 2003 on all of my PC but an exchange server is NOT
involved.
(2) There are no other userids on my pc, e.g. it is just my id
(3) No body other than myself has authority to update my calendar

The above should be true unless there is some setting I'm not aware of.

 

[Ace Fekay [MVP]]

In

I should also mention
(1) I'm running Outlook 2003 on all of my PC but an exchange server
is NOT involved.
(2) There are no other userids on my pc, e.g. it is just my id
(3) No body other than myself has authority to update my calendar

The above should be true unless there is some setting I'm not aware
of.

"JGT" wrote:

I did mention in one of my posts in this thread that may help to delete them
by changing the Calendar's view options.

======================
But the recurring ones can be tricky to sleuth out. I may suggest (not sure
if you've already knew or tried this), select the Calendar, goto View,
Arrange By, Category. Organize them by date or topic and find the offending
ones. They're listed as one item, meaning a recurring meeting is listed as
one item with a start and stop date. Just delete it and put the View back to
Day/Week/Month. I also use this view to help folks delete large attachments
in meetings, which go against their mailbox limits. You would need to add
the Size field to get that.
======================

The part I mentioned about a recurring meeting is listed as one item with a
start/stop date, this means that if the meeting recurs from now to eternity,
there will only be ONE entry. Simply delete it. I've found this useful
deleting recurring meetings our users can't seem to find the source (besides
if there are delegates, etc).

I hope you find this helpful.

Ace

 

[JGT]

Ace, much thanks but not brass ring.
I followed your suggestions. I have two sets of appointments that keep
recurring (1) the first was orignally set for May 19, 20, 21, 22, and 23 from
0800-1500 hours, (2) the second was set for July 12, 19, 26, Aug 02 from
0800-1800 hours. Originally I selected the first day of each set, pressed
delete and selected to delete and send a notice. The full set was deleted
from my system. After a few hours they started to recur.

Earlier today I deleted per your suggestion (for the first meeting it now
appeared 60 time on my calendar (e.g. 60 entries on May 19, 60 entries on May
20, etc.) and the second meeting appeared 70 times). I deleted each entry
without sending a notice. At this time neither appeared on my calendar.

I just checked my calendar and both now have three entries for each set (the
first meeting now appears on the original five days and the second now
appears on the original four days).

Since deleting earlier today I have not done anything in OL other than
reading some emails, responding to emails. and deleting some emails. I
estimate that about 6 hours have passed since I deleted per your suggestion
thus it seems that every two hours a set for both series is added back to my
calendar. BTW this timing is just a guess on my part but it is close.

I'm open for suggestions. Is there other information I can pass on?

 

[JGT]

A couple of other things I noticed
(1) when in the view you suggested sorting on the date column did not put
entries in date order. I expected to see all of the items from earliest date
to latest date but I might see some entries for June followed by some entries
for May. However all of the entries for the May meeting was in one group,
e.g. all 60 were grouped together and the same for the July meeting.
(2) I did open one of the recurring entries and noticed that the original
category was gone and the category was now blank and the label was now blank
(3) Everything else in the entry seemed to be as the orginal, when I closed
the window (I made no changes) I'm prompted to save the changes.

 

[Ace Fekay [MVP]]

In

A couple of other things I noticed
(1) when in the view you suggested sorting on the date column did not
put entries in date order. I expected to see all of the items from
earliest date to latest date but I might see some entries for June
followed by some entries for May. However all of the entries for the
May meeting was in one group, e.g. all 60 were grouped together and
the same for the July meeting. (2) I did open one of the recurring
entries and noticed that the original category was gone and the
category was now blank and the label was now blank (3) Everything
else in the entry seemed to be as the orginal, when I closed the
window (I made no changes) I'm prompted to save the changes.

Which date column did you sort it on, start date or end date? There's also a
Recurring column. If you recognize any of the recurring as the issue, simply
delete it without sending a notice. If they come back, open up the meeting
and look at the schedule tab. Who's in there? Ask those folks, for it may be
coming back from them, however I can't see it populating your calendar
unless you have Outlook set to auto-accept?

Ace

 

[JGT]

Sorry to be so slow in responding but I'm going through hell trying to post
to the MS community websites. Most often when I click on the reply button,
the screen will refresh and I do NOT see the window where I can type my post.
I'm have this problem on three different computers (another problem,
eeeeeeeee).

I saw your previous post about deleting the entries and have done this MANY
times. Within a couple of hours the entry will start reappearing. If I do
nothing after a few days I will have several reoucrrances of the same entry.
The other day when I deleted I had about 70 repeats of the same entry that
I've deleted numerous times.

Regarding your suggestion " I may suggest (not sure if you've already knew
or tried this), select the Calendar, goto View, Arrange By, Category.
Organize them by date or topic and find the offending ones. " Yes this is
what I have done many times but after a few hours (2-3) it reappears and will
continue to add itself again and again and again.

I currenlty have two meetings that I have deleted numerous times and they
continue to come back and add itself over and over. One meeting was for five
consecutive days (Monday through Friday from 0800 to 1500 hours). I use the
24 hour clock. I created the entry and I copied one other person on the
entry. The second meeting is very similar and the only difference it is for
four consecutive Saturdays.

If you want I'd be willing to copy you on the entry and possibly you can see
something that I cannot. Or if you want I can capture any images or system
states you want, I just need detail instructions. I can either send you the
info you need or create an ID on my FTP server.

Other than the entries are still in the future (5/19-523 and 7/12-8-2) and I
continue to see them. This is anoying I'm concerned that if I don't remove
them from Outlook at some point I will have some super large number of
entries for these two appointments and Outlook will hit some darn limit and
crash.

 

[Ace Fekay [MVP]]

In

Sorry to be so slow in responding but I'm going through hell trying
to post to the MS community websites. Most often when I click on the
reply button, the screen will refresh and I do NOT see the window
where I can type my post. I'm have this problem on three different
computers (another problem, eeeeeeeee).

I saw your previous post about deleting the entries and have done
this MANY times. Within a couple of hours the entry will start
reappearing. If I do nothing after a few days I will have several
reoucrrances of the same entry. The other day when I deleted I had
about 70 repeats of the same entry that I've deleted numerous times.

Regarding your suggestion " I may suggest (not sure if you've already
knew or tried this), select the Calendar, goto View, Arrange By,
Category. Organize them by date or topic and find the offending ones.
" Yes this is what I have done many times but after a few hours (2-3)
it reappears and will continue to add itself again and again and
again.

I currenlty have two meetings that I have deleted numerous times and
they continue to come back and add itself over and over. One meeting
was for five consecutive days (Monday through Friday from 0800 to
1500 hours). I use the 24 hour clock. I created the entry and I
copied one other person on the entry. The second meeting is very
similar and the only difference it is for four consecutive Saturdays.

If you want I'd be willing to copy you on the entry and possibly you
can see something that I cannot. Or if you want I can capture any
images or system states you want, I just need detail instructions. I
can either send you the info you need or create an ID on my FTP
server.

Other than the entries are still in the future (5/19-523 and
7/12-8-2) and I continue to see them. This is anoying I'm concerned
that if I don't remove them from Outlook at some point I will have
some super large number of entries for these two appointments and
Outlook will hit some darn limit and crash.

Under the Recurrence field (in category view), did this meeting that you
tried to delete and keeps coming back, indicate it is a recurring meeting,
as well as a start date and end date? If so, and you deleted that line item
or entry, it should go away.

Are there delegates involved?

You can email me at my (e-mail address removed). (no spaces in my email
address).


Ace