Keep your Outlook meeting requests in your Inbox

By default, Outlook deletes meeting request mails once you've accepted or declined the invite. This is designed to help you reduce clutter in your Inbox, and you can recover them individually if you like from your Deleted Items folder (as long as it hasn't been emptied).

If you prefer to hang on to these invite messages by default - say, to maintain a more complete e-mail history with your correspondents - you can toggle this option off.

In Outlook 2010, this is found under the File tab. Click Options, then Mail, and scroll down to the Send messages section. Now uncheck the box next to Delete meeting requests and notifications from Inbox after responding:

In Outlook 2007, you'll find the similar option Delete meeting request from Inbox when responding under Tools, Options, Preferences, E-mail Options, Advanced E-mail Options.

Suzanne

Comments

• Anonymous
  November 03, 2010
  Thanks for the info. Appreciate the effort.

• Anonymous
  June 22, 2011
  This should have been disabled by default!

• Anonymous
  March 18, 2012
  I think this option is also the reason why people loose meetings from their calendar.  If you delete the appointment item from the inbox that "DELETES THE APPOINTMENT FROM THE CALENDAR"  well at least in my experience of using the software.

• Anonymous
  March 18, 2012
  That is the most stupid place to put this option

• Anonymous
  May 25, 2012
  Thank you.  It is so so helpful to see when the invites appeared in my inbox.

• Anonymous
  October 27, 2012
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  November 20, 2012
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  February 13, 2013
  exact solution for the problem i was trying to fix!!!

• Anonymous
  March 22, 2013
  This is so dumb to place this setting in "send message' tab- common' Microsoft people! Thanks so much for pointing this out..

• Anonymous
  April 02, 2013
  I see no similar option in Outlook for Mac. I miss Entourage and Office 2008 more and more every day.  

• Anonymous
  April 04, 2013
  Please tell the person at Microsoft who had this moved to put it back in an easy location. This is really dumb and so is the worthless Office 2010 Help can't even find it.

• Anonymous
  May 07, 2013
  Is there not an option in Outlook for MAC?

• Anonymous
  May 22, 2013
  I always struggle to find this - I've had to have my work PC rebuilt a number of times, and always end up frustrated that my invites completely disappear when I've responded to them.  I search and search, try the help (which doesn't find any hits), and then end up googling for a solution. Suzanne - appreciate the time and effort you've gone to to post this :-)  Many thanks

• Anonymous
  June 10, 2013
  very helpful. Saves a lot of my time now. dont have to go looking at past Calendars.

• Anonymous
  August 09, 2013
  I knew it was there (our IT lady didn't!) but couldn't locate it!  Thanks, very clear instructions.  Feel so much safer keeping them in inbox - clutter or no clutter!

• Anonymous
  November 27, 2013
  I agree with the posters above - why on earth did MS choose to hide this settings in the "Send Messages" area. This setting has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with send messages. Interesting that when you type "delete meeting requests" into Outlook help you get zero results about this setting. Yet another MS fail...