Options in Outlook's Resource Scheduling dialog box are disabled

Applies to: Microsoft Office Outlook 2007Microsoft Outlook 2010

Symptoms

When you open the Resource Scheduling dialog box in Outlook, all the options in the dialog box are unavailable (dimmed). An example of this behavior is shown in the following figure:

The screen shot showing Resource Scheduling dialog box

Cause

This problem occurs when both of the following items are true:
  • Your mailbox is on Exchange 2007, Exchange 2010, or Exchange 2013.
  • There are no public folders in the Exchange environment.
Public folders are required for the direct booking feature (which is directly tied to the Resource Scheduing dialog box options).


Resolution

To resolve this problem, use one of the following approaches:

  • Contact the Exchange administrator to see whether public folders can be added to the Exchange environment. Please be aware that if they are currently not available, it is unlikely that the Exchange administrator will be able to do this because it is likely that the decision not to support public folders was already made.
  • Instead of using direct booking, use an Exchange server resource mailbox instead. Starting in Outlook 2013, direct booking is no longer supported. Therefore, using an Exchange server resource mailbox would be the better option because direct booking cannot be used in later versions of Outlook.