How to cancel a meeting in Outlook Calendar

While we’re working in the office, we might need to send out meeting requests to our colleagues for various reasons. It might be a one-time meeting or a series of meetings. However, sometimes we might have to cancel those meetings due to unavoidable reasons. As meeting organizers, we need to inform all the invitees about meeting cancellations. Let’s see how we can cancel a meeting in Outlook Calendar.

Cancel a meeting in Outlook

Before we move ahead and understand how to cancel a meeting in Outlook, let’s first understand how Outlook works. The Outlook Calendar is an interesting and extremely useful application. Using the Outlook Calendar, one can easily send meeting requests as well as cancel the meeting with ease. It is also very easy to schedule multiple occurrences meeting with Outlook. The organizer holds full rights to sending the meeting requests to various people as well as to cancel the meeting. The meeting can be a one-time meeting, a recurring meeting, or one or more instances of recurring meetings. Here are the simple steps that need to be followed for any type of meeting cancellation.

Steps to cancel a one-time meeting

Open Outlook. Go to the Calendar tab. In Calendar, click the meeting without opening it.
On the meeting tab, click Cancel Meeting in Outlook in the Actions group
Type your text message which you want to attach with the cancellation notification.
Then finally click on the ‘Send Cancellation button.

The ‘Cancel Meeting’ option on the Action menu is available only to the organizer. Those who cannot see the option cannot cancel or delete the meeting.

Steps to cancel a recurring meeting

Open Outlook. Once opened, click on the Calendar tab.
Click Open the series in the Open Recurring Item dialog box and then press OK.
Click Recurrence on the toolbar.
Click End By which is mentioned under Range of Recurrence.
After clicking on ‘End By’, select the date for which you want the meeting to end and then press Ok.
Click Send Update.

If you cannot see the Recurrence Option on the Standard Toolbar, you will not be able to cancel the meeting as you are not the meeting organizer.

Steps to cancel an instance of the recurring meeting

Open Outlook and open the instance of the recurring meeting.
Click on Open This Occurrence in Open Recurring Item and press Ok.
Click Cancel Meeting in Outlook present in Actions Menu.
In the Confirm Delete dialog box, click Delete This Occurrence.

If you don’t see the option to cancel a meeting in Outlook’s Actions menu, you’re not the organizer and don’t have the ability to cancel the meeting.

Whenever you cancel or delete a meeting, it’s always a good idea to let everyone know. There’s no one right way to do this, but it’s the polite thing to do.