Prevent Outlook meeting requests from auto-deleting

Question

How can I prevent accepted meetings from being deleted in Office 2011?

When I accept a meeting in Outlook 2011 for Mac, it always automatically moves the invitation to deleted items. I'd prefer to see the invitation in my inbox indefinitely.

There are how-to guides describing how this can be fixed in Windows machines, but I've explored (I think) all the nooks and crannies of the preferences menu on my Macbook and can't find any equivalent setting in Office 2011 for Mac.

Answer 1

Another option is create a rule for messages of Kind "Meeting Request" to be copied to an "Invitations" folder in your inbox.

Steps that work on my version of Outlook.

1. Create an Invitations folder.

2. Highlight message that is a meeting invite

3. Click on the "Organize" toolbar

4. Click on the "Rules" icon

5. On the little menu that pops up, click "Create Rule..."

6. On the rules dialog, the first field will say "From". Change that to "Kind".

7. The next box will say "Encrypted" (as in Kind is Encrypted). Change that to "Meeting Request"

8. Use the minus sign to delete the sent to and subject rules (the next two rows)

9. Change "Do the Following" from "Move to Folder" to "Copy to Folder"

10. Change the folder name to "Invitations" or whatever you called it in step one

11. Uncheck the box "Do not apply other rules..."

12. Click ok

Answer 2

I found the setting present in the Web version:

Answer 3

Actually I found a work around for this! If you go to your calendar and right click on the greyed out calendar entry that shows up (this is automatically done by outlook) and accept the request from the drop down menu (or tentatively accept or decline, whatever the case may be), it will go into your calendar and the actual email request will still be in your mailbox.

Answer 4

Unfortunately, this feature is not currently available in Outlook 2011. Personally I think it was a huge mistake to omit this feature in the Mac version of Office 2011.

The best you can do is to send your feedback by clicking Help > Send Feedback... in any Office application, or by clicking on this link. However, if your feedback is taken into consideration, this feature will most probably be added only to future versions of Office for Mac.

More info on this Microsoft Community question

Answer 5

This has been requested for Outlook for Mac on the Microsoft UserVoice forum:

Don't auto-delete meeting requests!

Don't auto delete meeting requests! Sometimes they contain useful information in the body of the message that is hard to see once the meeting has been put on the calendar.

I can customize this setting in Outlook for Windows. Why leave it out for Outlook for Mac?

https://outlook.uservoice.com/forums/293343-outlook-for-mac/suggestions/13031544-don-t-auto-delete-meeting-requests

Unfortunately, it has not yet been implemented. Please consider adding a comment to that UserVoice thread.