Don't add group calendar items to user's personal calendar
When an entry is added on a group calendar, it also shows up on each member's personal calendar. Most users do not want to see the group calendar invitation on their personal calendar: 1) because they are already a member of the group, b) not all group activities apply to the every member, and 3) for higher volume calendars, each member is burdened with a lot of time wasted in deleting these entries to clear out their own/personal calendar. SUGGESTION: Add a setting to the Group so that this behavior can be prevented. Selecting multiple calendars (even group calendars) should be a simple and consistent thing for Outlook (local) users to do without additional/unnecessary cleanup work.
Tony Grigonis
shared this idea
AdminMicrosoft 365 Groups Feedback
(Product Owner, Microsoft Office 365)
responded
As the person creating an event, simply create an Appointment (in Outlook 2016) or an event with no attendees in Outlook on the web with the “Send a meeting invitation to group members” unchecked.
Doing so will make sure the events stay only in the Group calendar, and is perfect for FYI items like out-of-office.
15 comments
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Daniel Houser-Diaz
commented
When an event is created in the group calendar in the Outlook Desktop App the default is an "Appointment". Great!!! No one gets the group event invite sent to their calendar :)
On the Outlook App for Mobile... different story. it defaults to a "Meeting" that CANNOT BE CHANGED. I have to manually remove the invitees from the "People" category. This is not intuitive and means I get spammed with invites I don't want to see by coworkers who accidentally don't remove me from the group calendar invite via mobile.
Our company is in the field 90% of the time and needs an easy way to make the default Outlook Mobile App event creation to be an "Appointment" not a "Meeting"
PLEASE REOPEN THIS AND HELP!!!!
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Anonymous
commented
Love how the response in 2018 was...we're lazy over here at Microsoft and don't feel like making a change to the code. Instead why don't we have all of our customers inconvenience themselves by making them go through tons of extra steps every time they try to add an appointment to a group calendar.....
No thanks Microsoft. We'll use shared calendars and public folder calendars instead until you guys decide to stop being lazy and listen to your customers.
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Anonymous
commented
Please please change it so that the default is not sending it to every ones personal calendars. it is the most annoying thing ever. I see people complaining about it for a while
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Admin
commented
the feature to bounce the events scheduled against the o365 group calendar to every user calendar should be an option... not a non-changeable default. can use shared mailbox calendar but can't then display such calendar on the group sharepoint site or teams...
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Emilie
commented
was this resolved? I am still not sure how can I NOT see the group calendar events on my personal calendar. As someone else mentioned, I created a group calendar so we can have a separate calendar to see events but I don't want it on my personal calendar.
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Lauren
commented
Just figured it out more recently than the admin post above-- through Outlook web client, create an appointment and do not add any attendees. This seems to only post to the group calendar, and does not copy over to personal. I cannot find a similar option on the desktop app for Outlook. :|
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John
commented
yes, there should be a simple setting in SharePoint to disable all invitations from being sent when an event is added to a group calendar. Even when the invitation is sent from an individual to a group calendar.
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Adrienne
commented
Is there a resolution to this issue?
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Anonymous
commented
@admin the suggestion to unchecked the “Send a meeting invitation to group members” is only applicable to the web version. There's no checkbox in the desktop version. Can this be improved please?
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Kevin Hansonoda
commented
@Admin - Unfortunately unchecking the invitation box when creating the event only prevents the invitation notice from being sent. It is automatically added to the member's calendar regardless.
Having a way to filter specific-group (e.g. Group 1, Group 2) entries on or off from your personal calendar (In the View tab in Outlook) would be the fastest way to mitigate complaints about forced group calendar events.
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Steve
commented
@Admin, That's such a work around way of doing things that should just be implemented correctly.
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Anonymous
commented
Agree that the default behavior should be to NOT email all the members with a notification/invite, and to NOT add appointments to their personal calendars. And while it's a bare minimum workaround to be able to uncheck the "Send a meeting invite to group members" box in the web version of Outlook, there does not appear to be an equivalent in the desktop client.
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Anonymous
commented
Strongly agree. While the duplicate event can be avoided by unchecking "Send a meeting invitation to group members", Outlook should be smart enough to avoid this. If a user is posting something to a group calendar, it should be implied that they do not want additional invitations going out to each person on that group (or at very least, that should be the default setting).
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Mike
commented
Microsoft, how can you ***** this up, like EVERYTHING you do SO BADLY!!!! The reason we have a group calendar is so that we can share it AS A STANDALONE CALENDAR, and more specifically, because your ****** SharePoint system won't allow Mac users to see SharePoint systems. So, as usual, you have messed this up too.
Let me ask you this: what is the point of having the option under group settings of clicking a box to "Send all group email and events to members inboxes..." IF YOU FORCE THAT TO HAPPEN ANYWAY!! And, the same checkbox says that "They can change this setting later." But they really can't ?? What the heck!! Someone needs to address this ASAP!!!
And, while you're at it, why don't you tell us how to use Office 365 to share a single, common calendar, with anyone I darn well please in my organization, INCLUDING MAC USERS, without mucking up every other possibly useful tool in the process!!!!
After three years of dealing with this kind of ****, from OneDrive Sync not working to SharePoint being an unmanageable beast to every other kind of wasted hour I've spent trying to work around your freaking experiments, I've about had it with you. And worst of all, you don't care and you won't address any of this.
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David Robinson
commented
It would be good for members of a group to be able to Opt-Out of group calendar events showing in their personal Calendars. Some Groups use events as an FYI for the members, but do not expect members to attend. I can see the events in the Group Calendar, but don't want it on my personal calendar.