I declined a single meeting occurrence in Outlook. How do I get it back?

Question

I mistakenly declined a single occurrence of a recurring meeting in Outlook. How do I undo this and get the meeting back?

I also had a look at How to get back a declined outlook invitation. But that question does not relate to my problem. As I have declined a single occurrence in a reoccurring event.

I'm using Outlook 2007 on Exchange.

Answer 1

None of the posted answers worked for me. Toggling the recurrence settings seemed promising, but I couldn't find those controls in Outlook web mail. What finally worked for me:

1. Make sure you have the original invite
2. Completely delete the entire series from your calendar (don't send a response to avoid confusing the sender) - Note that merely declining and re-accepting is not enough, you must delete
3. From the original series invite, change the status to Tentative (do not send a response)
4. Now accept the original series (You can choose to send a response here and it should track properly*)
5. The declined occurrence is now back, along with any other occurrences you had previously declined, so be sure to re-decline any future occurrences you still can't attend

*it may take a few moments for the tracking tab to correctly show your response

Answer 2

I just had the same need today (restore a declined occurrence of a recurring meeting not organized by me).

The below procedure worked for me (Outlook 2013):

1. Go to the calendar view
2. Double click on a remaining occurrence
3. Choose to open the "entire series"
4. Edit the "Recurrence" of the meeting (Ribbon > Meeting Series > Options > Recurrence)
5. Do a fake change (move something back-n-forth in the settings with no impact on the schedule so that Outlook "thinks" you have changed something)
6. Close the Recurence dialog (click OK)
7. "Save & Close" the meeting series

Now all instances should be back.

Answer 3

I also could not "undecline," so I went to the sender's calendar, opened the item, and cllicked the button to copy to my calendar. A message popped up and said that to do this, I had to accept the meeting, which I did. Now it's on my calendar. Hope this helps.

Answer 4

Try this (it worked for me).

Note: I did delete all instances of the calendar series before I did this. It is possible that is a necessary step.

1. Open your Deleted Items folder in Outlook
2. Find the original invite (if there were updates along the way, ignore those)
3. Right-click the original item and select Move > Inbox (you may need to select Move > Other Folder > Inbox).
4. When prompted to send this (for some reason it did not just move), email the appointment to yourself.
5. When the appointment arrives, click the attachment and select Copy to My Calendar.

Hopefully this will solve the problem for you. In my case it returned all instances back to my calendar and I could delete the one I intended to delete.

EDIT: There is another method that works, even if you are in M365, and it is easier than my original solution:

1. Open the entire series
2. Click on Recurrence
3. Extend the recurrence by an arbitrary amount of time (one week or one hour should do)
4. Send updates (this resets all exceptions and restores deleted instances of the series)
5. Go back and delete the correct instance(s)
6. Go

Answer 5

Just like the OP, I had declined a single instance of a recurring meeting from an invite I have previously accepted.

Note: Any changes to the series on your calendar will be lost since you have to delete and re-add the series. ...but, that's kind of the point :-)

This just worked for me in Outlook 2016 since I still had the original invite:

1. Confirm you have the original invite (Deleted Items, Inbox, etc.)
   • This is important for restoring the series on your calendar after deleting it in the next step.
2. Delete the series from your calendar
   • Choose "No" when asked if you want to send a response to the originator so you aren't spamming them.
3. Go back to the original invite and choose "Accept" without sending a response to the originator
4. Check your calendar and all instances in the series will be there (even the one(s) you previously declined)

Answer 6

It might be in your deleted folder.

Answer 7

I know this is really old, but I was able to restore a declined occurrence. Here is how to do it:

1. Open another person's calendar that is also part of the recurring meeting
2. Select and drag the occurrence that you want to re-accept (or tentatively accept) to your calendar
3. At this point you can either Copy Series or Copy Selected Occurrences (Since we just want to re-accept the one occurrence, select Copy Selected Occurences)
4. You will then get the option to: Accept the meeting, Tentatively accept the meeting or Copy the meeting I am not sure what Copy the meeting will do, I am guessing that it will put it onto your personal calendar, but will not notify the meeting about your status (i.e. you will still show up as Declined)

Hope this helps. This was done on Outlook 2013.

Answer 8

In the new Outlook (the one that looks like Web Outlook), I finally managed to do this:

1. click on non-declined instance of the recurring meeting to open the details pop-up
2. click on the "View event" double arrow ⤢ icon (top right corner) to open the meeting window
3. click on Show all instances (next to the date and time of the meeting) to open the complete list
4. find the declined instance and click on it
5. click on ❌ No, I won't attend ▿ to open the Change RSVP drop-down
6. click on This event
7. click on ✔ Yes

Answer 9

What worked for me is to copy and paste one of the remaining meetings from the series and then change the date of the copy.