OL2002: "The Value for Appointment Busy Status Is Not Valid" Error Message When You Try to Open an Appointment

When you try to open an appointment in your Outlook Calendar, you may receive the following error message and the appointment does not open:

This problem occurs if the Busy Status of your appointment has been set to an invalid value.

Valid values for the Busy Status are 0 (Free), 1 (Tentative), 2 (Busy), or 3 (Out of Office). Any other value causes the error message described in the "Symptoms" section of this article.

Service Pack Information

This problem is corrected in Office XP Service Pack 3.To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Microsoft Office XP. For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Hotfix Information

A supported hotfix is available from Microsoft. However, this hotfix is intended to correct only the problem that is described in this article. Apply this hotfix only to systems that are experiencing this specific problem.

If the hotfix is available for download, there is a "Hotfix download available" section at the top of this Knowledge Base article. If this section does not appear, submit a request to Microsoft Customer Service and Support to obtain the hotfix.

Note If additional issues occur or if any troubleshooting is required, you might have to create a separate service request. The usual support costs will apply to additional support questions and issues that do not qualify for this specific hotfix. For a complete list of Microsoft Customer Service and Support telephone numbers or to create a separate service request, visit the following Microsoft Web site: Note The "Hotfix download available" form displays the languages for which the hotfix is available. If you do not see your language, it is because a hotfix is not available for that language.

This fix is a post-Office XP Service Pack 2 (SP-2) fix. To install the fix, you must have Office XP SP-2 installed. For additional information about Office XP SP-2, click the following article number to see the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: Additionally, you may have to install Windows Installer 2.0 to install this fix. For additional information about the Windows Installer requirement for post-Office XP SP-2 fixes, click the following article number to see the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Step 1: Install the Fix

After you obtain the fix from Microsoft Product Support Services, install this fix appropriate to your situation. The English version of these fixes will have the file attributes (or later) that are listed in the following table. The dates and times for these files are listed in coordinated universal time (UTC). When you view the file information, it is converted to local time. To find the difference between UTC and local time, use the Time Zone tab in the Date and Time tool in Control Panel.

Client Fix

Full File Fix

After the hotfix is installed, the English version of this fix will have the file attributes (or later) that are listed in the following table:

Step 2: After You Install the Fix

After you have installed the fix, the Calendar Free-Busy time may show as a black bar in Daily view. The black bar is an indication that the particular item is damaged and that Outlook has changed the status to Tentative.

To correct this problem, you must open the item, edit the status, and then save the appointment. After you complete this step, the status color will be set correctly.

Note Microsoft highly recommends that you restart Outlook with the /cleanfreebusy switch to update the Free/Busy information. To do this, quit Outlook, click Start, and then click Run. In the Open box, type Outlook /cleanfreebusy, and then click OK.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article. This problem was first corrected in Office XP Service Pack 3.