Resending a Calendar Invite in Microsoft Outlook

I find that you learn the most about something when you try to use it for something new. Last week I sent out a Microsoft Outlook invitation to a bunch of people across different parts of Sony. One person declined the invitation due to a schedule conflict. He then asked if we could reschedule for a different time. I responded that with so many people on the meeting invitation I had to select a time where I knew most people could attend. He then worked on changing his schedule so he could be a part of the meeting. Now I needed to re-invite him to the meeting.

It is very easy to add someone to an existing meeting but I have never had to add someone to an Outlook calendar invite who previously declined the meeting. Sure I could cancel the meeting and send a new invitation to everyone on my list. That seemed like a lot of work that might annoy everyone who responded that they could attend the meeting. So I looked up the proper steps according to Microsoft and it turned out to be rather simple.

The first thing to do is open the calendar invite and remove the person that originally declined the invitation. Outlook will send out an update to just that one person saying they have been canceled from the meeting when you save the updated invitation. Then add them back to the meeting and it will send out a new notification to just that one person asking them to accept or decline the invitation. Nobody else will get notified of the changes, which is exactly what I wanted for such a large number of people attending the meeting.

I use Outlook constantly but occasionally get to try things that are outside what I have done before. This trick is probably very intuitive if you stop and think about the steps to follow. I appreciated being able to look up the solution and get the software to do what I wanted. Hopefully this trick helps you too.