XCLN: Outlook 97 and Outlook 98 Allow Overlapping Appointments to Occur Depending On Free and Busy Status of Placeholder Appointment (253797)

SYMPTOMS

If a user acting as your meeting planner has at least Read access permission to your calendar and your calendar contains any "placeholder" appointments (to block off time and schedule a private appointment, for example, a doctor's appointment), the user planning a meeting in Outlook 97 or Outlook 98 cannot see the nested private appointment that exists behind your placeholder appointment, especially if the placeholder appointment is marked as free time. This may result in unintentional double booking of your calendar during the time that the private meeting was scheduled.

WORKAROUND

To work around this problem, have users who act as meeting planners use meeting request e-mail messages. There are several ways you can avoid conflicts when you make appointments, but this is the preferred workaround. It allows you to check the free and busy information for the intended attendees when you set up a meeting, and allows you to e-mail the request to the attendees. It also allows the intended attendees to accept or decline the invitation to the meeting, in case there are last minute changes that were not reflected in the free and busy information at the time that you created the meeting request. When the meeting is accepted, it is posted to the calendar. This workaround works for all versions of Outlook.

To review meeting requests before you accept them, turn off the default setting to automatically accept meeting requests and cancellations. To do this, click Options on the Tools menu, click Preferences, click Calendar Options, and then click Resource Scheduling. Click to clear the Automatically accept meeting requests and cancellations check box. This leaves the response to the meeting invitation marked as "Tentative" and allows you to check for conflicts, and you still retain the option of final approval.

MORE INFORMATION

Microsoft Schedule+ users can see private appointments, but this was changed for the release of Outlook 97 and Outlook 98. In Outlook 2000, private appointments are displayed as a generic block labeled "Private" in the Calendar view.

Background History of Private Appointments

Schedule+ Clients

For additional information about private appointments in Schedule+, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

183650 Schedule + Won't Print Outlook Private Appointments

This article describes the inability of Schedule+ 7.0, Schedule+ 7.5, and Schedule+ 95 (Schedule+ 7.x) users to print or preview private appointments that are contained in an Outlook calendar. A utility, Msoutl32.dll, is available that provides the ability to view the Calendar folder, but you cannot directly book meetings to the calendar with the Msoutl32.dll utility installed on the Schedule+ client computer. Meeting requests are still necessary for interoperability between Schedule+ and Outlook when you book meetings. For additional information about how to download the Msoutl32.dll utility, see Q183650.

Outlook 97 and Outlook 98 Information

For additional information about private appointments in Outlook 97, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

170578 Details of Private Appointments Can Be Viewed by Others

This article describes the ability of other Outlook users to view private appointments. This behavior was changed in Outlook 97 release 8.01, so that other Outlook users could not view private appointments, and that behavior continued through Outlook 98.

Outlook 2000 Information

For additional information about private appointments in Outlook 2000, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

249324 How to Give Access to Private Items for Delegate

This article describes the ability of delegates in Outlook 2000 to view private appointments as a new feature, and describes how to allow a delegate to view items that have been marked as private in the manager's mailbox.

In Outlook 2000, you can directly "book" an appointment in the same manner that you originally could in Schedule+, by making appointments directly to the calendar without the use of meeting requests and confirmation e-mail messages.