How to Cancel a Meeting in Outlook? [Single & Recurring]

The Calendar module in Microsoft Outlook is one of the most useful features of the program. You can find any meeting, appointment, or deadline on the calendar and your personal calendar.

Once you created a meeting scheduled in Outlook, or later reschedule the meeting, the Outlook calendar saved your agenda both in the one-time or recurring meetings for the creator as well as attendees of the meeting.

After all this juggling, in the case due to some unavoidable circumstances, the meeting needs to be canceled, Outlook allows the user to execute the process of cancellation and send the intimation to all the attendees.

Here in the article, you will learn step by step process of “How to Cancel Ontime/Recurring Meeting in Outlook 365” both in the Outlook application as well as the Outlook web application (OWA).

How to cancel a scheduled meeting (one time)?

The meeting always consists of more than one member, any modification like cancel need to be updated to all the members, and the creator of the meeting send cancellation update to all the recipient, which is normal practice.

sometimes you just want to cancel or delete a meeting from your calendar, and still want the meeting to go on smoothly with all the attendees taking part in it, here you will learn both the scenario, [and how to get it done].

  • Open Outlook Calendar and click the calendar icon from the navigation section from the left bottom corner of the Outlook screen.
Calendar icon navigation bar
  • Grab the position (date) of your scheduled meeting and double-click on the meeting content on your calendar.
  • The meeting invitation window pops up, click cancel meeting from the top left-hand corner of the screen.
click cancel meeting outlook
  • Clicking on cancel meeting, convert the send button into Send cancellation, you can also mention the reason for the cancellation of the meeting in your content area.
send cancellation outlook
  • Your recipient/s received a cancellation email message and the meeting scheduled is removed from the calendar.

The above method is sure short, in some cases, the creator needs to cancel the meeting for himself and wants our attendees to carry on with the meeting. The process is the same, but the only difference is their attendees will not get any updates.

How To Cancel Meeting Without Sending Cancellation in Outlook?

This process is slightly off the track, the straightforward method will not stop cancellation updates to other members in the form of an Email message, you must consider a different approach you are tricking with Outlook.

Here you get how?

  • Open Outlook, before commencing the process, and activate work offline mode. (This process disconnects you from the outer world, but still, you can modify your own platform).
  • Click Send/Receive Tab >> Hit Work offline.
Cancel Meeting Without Sending Cancellation In Outlook
  • You can check on the right bottom corner of the screen, the status bar displays that indicate working offline.
work offline mode

After you activate the offline mode, you must repeat the process of selecting the meeting date on your Outlook calendar, double-click on time, Click delete the meeting from the invited event tab, and finally, Hit Send cancellation.

  • Now the cancellation email will be stuck in the Outbox until Outlook gets online.
  • Go to the navigation section (left button corner of the screen) click the email icon >> Home Tab >> Go to specific email address section >> Go to Outlook Open it by double click on it.
Outlook Outbox
  • In the Outbox folder, check out the email waiting for Outlook to online, select the email then select Delete from the right-clicking menu.
How To Cancel Meeting Without Sending Cancellation In Outlook
  • This step removes the meeting event from your calendar but is still available to other members, (the meeting will go on), you have also deleted the mail from the outbox, so there is nothing to send for Outlook. [refer to the image of both the creator and another member].
compare meeting calendar Outlook

Finally, Click the Work offline button to connect to Outlook, and everything works normally.

How To Cancel Individual Outlook Recurring Meetings in a Series?

A recurring meeting in Outlook is a series of events in case you need to cancel the whole series or a single meeting in a series, the process is quite like a one-time meeting cancellation.

Let’s begin with canceling a single meeting in a series, Outlook allows you to cancel a single meeting from the series and the rest of the meeting remains untouched, and the attendees will be notified of the cancellation of a particular meeting with the cancellation email they received.

  • Open the Outlook calendar, select the date, and double-click on the occurrence meeting.
  • Open Recurring Item dialog box pops up, which consists of two options: first “Just this one” & “the entire series“.
open recurring items
  • Select Just this one for single meeting cancellation and click OK.
  • The recurring meeting dialog box appears >> Under Meeting Occurrence Tab >> Click Cancel Meeting from the top left corner of the screen.
Meeting Occurrence Tab
  • Outlook once again required confirmation with the dialog box “Confirm Delete“, select delete this occurrence and Hit OK.
confirm delete
  • Again, Click on Send cancellation, you can also mention the reason for cancellation, an email sends to all the attendees regarding the cancellation of a single meeting of the series.
send cancellation recurring meeting

How To Cancel Entire Recurring Meeting in Outlook?

In case, you are required to cancel the entire series of recurring meetings,

  • Select the “entire series” and click OK.
the entire series outlook
  • The recurring meeting dialog box appears >> Under Meeting Occurrence Tab >> Click Cancel Meeting from the top left corner of the screen. [refer to image above]
  • Now Click Send cancellation, Cancellation email for the entire series will be sent to all the attendees.
Click Send cancellation

In case the recipient clicks “Remove from the calendar“, from the email message received the series will be permanently deleted from the attendee calendar too. If the attendee doesn’t bother to click “Remove from the calendar“, His calendar fetches the email cancellation information the calendar. [image of attendee calendar]

cancelled recurring meeting outlook

Once you cancel the meeting, you cannot reverse this action, you need to create a new meeting request both one-time and recurring.

How to cancel a meeting in the Outlook Web Application?

Outlook web application is a web-based email service, you can cancel the scheduled meeting in a single meeting as well as recurring. Let’s dive into How?

  • Open Outlook web calendar.
  • Get a single meeting-specific date and click on it.
  • Meeting details dialog box pops up >> Click Cancel
Outlook web application meeting
  •  You are required to disclose the reason for the cancellation of the Meeting, and finally, Click send, your attendee will be updated on the canceled meeting.
cancel event and notify attendee

In case you created a recurring meeting in OWA, you can easily cancel the meeting, again there are a few options

  • Cancel Selected Event
  • Cancel this and all the Event
  • Entire Series of Events.

Let’s understand all three options:

  • Open Outlook web calendar.
  • Now get the recurring meeting date. selection of date in recurring is especially important if you need to cancel a specific event, not the entire one.
  • Click the date, a detailed description notepad pops up, and click Cancel.
  • You get three options, (Cancel selected Event, Cancel this and all the Event, Entire Series of Events).
Cancel this and all the Event
  • Select anyone (accordingly to your requirement), inject the cancellation note, and click Send.

Your attendee will get the canceled email and the event automatically be deleted from the calendar.

Conclusion

In the end, you can cancel your meetings in two ways. You can click on the green check next to the meeting to cancel it, or you can click the ‘x‘ on the meeting details.

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Amit Bansal

My Name is Amit Bansal, and I am the founder of "Mail Smartly", With a track record of penning in-depth blogs and producing informative YouTube videos, for a deeper dive into solutions and tutorials, visit my YouTube Channel

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