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Meetings that are placed in an owner's calendar by a delegate do not display free/busy information for additional meeting attendees in Outlook

Article ID: 309185 - View products that this article applies to.

This article was previously published under Q309185

Symptoms

In Microsoft Outlook or in Outlook Web Access, you may be unable to view attendee availability if a delegate accepted a meeting for you.

If you have set up a delegate and have configured your delegate to receive a copy of meeting requests, and if the delegate views or accepts a meeting request on your behalf before you have viewed the request, the Scheduling tab in the meeting item that is created in your calendar only displays the meeting organizer's free/busy information. The free/busy information for all the other meeting recipients is displayed as back slashes (\\\\\), which indicates that no information is available. Additionally, you may see an underlined envelope icon in front of attendees' names, which indicates that the name is resolved in Outlook. However, a non-underlined envelope icon with an X through it may also display for attendees' names, which indicates that their names are not resolved in Outlook.

In Outlook Web Access, the Availability tab is not present when the meeting owner views the meeting.

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Cause

When the delegate views or accepts the meeting request in behalf of the meeting owner, the information that is contained in the delegate's meeting request does not have all required information to populate all the recipients. To see other recipients' free/busy information, the recipient information has to be fully populated. This occurs because the meeting request that is sent to the delegate is sent through a forward mail action. When a message is forwarded, the recipient information for all other recipients other than the originator and the receiver is not fully populated.

Note This problem occurs in Outlook 2007, Outlook 2010 or in Outlook 2013 when the manager’s mailbox resides on a Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 or Microsoft Exchange Server 2013, and the Exchange Calendar Assistant is turned off for the user's mailbox. (The AutomateProcessing parameter is set to None). To determine the value of the AutomateProcessing parameter, run the following command in the Exchange Management Shell:

Exchange 2013 and Exchange 2010

Get-CalendarProcessing mailbox_name | FL automateprocessing
Exchange 2007

Get-MailboxCalendarSettings mailbox_name | FL automateprocessing

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Workaround

The workaround to the problem depends on the version of Outlook that you are using and the version of Microsoft Exchange on which the manager’s mailbox resides.

Method 1

This method applies to either of the following environments:

Mailbox on Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 (or an earlier version) and using any version of Outlook to access the mailbox
Outlook 2003 (or an earlier version) connecting to a mailbox on any version of Exchange Server

To see the free/busy information for all recipients, the meeting request must be accepted by the mailbox owner. Or, someone with mailbox rights must log on directly to the owner's mailbox and accept the meeting request.

Method 2

This method applies to the following environment:

Mailbox on Exchange Server 2007 (or a later version) and using Outlook 2007 or later version to access the mailbox

In this environment, make sure that the Exchange Calendar Assistant is enabled for the manager’s mailbox. To enable the Exchange Calendar Assistant for a mailbox, use the following Exchange Shell command:

Exchange 2013 and Exchange 2010

Set-CalendarProcessing mailbox_name –AutomateProcessing:AutoUpdate
Exchange 2007

Set-MailboxCalendarSettings mailbox_name -AutomateProcessing:AutoUpdate

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