Options in Outlook's Resource Scheduling dialog box are disabled

Original KB number:   2859532

Symptoms

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

Cause

This problem occurs when both of the following items are true:

• Your mailbox is on Exchange Server 2013, Exchange Server 2010, or Exchange Server 2007.
• 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 Scheduling dialog box options).

Resolution

To resolve this problem, use one of these approaches:

• Contact the Exchange administrator to see whether public folders can be added to the Exchange environment. 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.