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A reader has this question "I have a small number of users who, when they receive an email notification that a meeting request they sent has been forwarded to another user, Outlook crashes. We are using Exchange 2007 and Outlook 2003."
A new feature in Exchange 2007 will deliver a notification to the meeting organizer when the meeting is forwarded by an attendee to someone else. It's a really nice feature unless you're the organizer and still using Outlook 2003. When Outlook 2003 tries to render the New Mail Desktop Alert for the Meeting Forward Notification message Outlook crashes.
End-user Solutions
One solution is to install Office 2003 SP3. If that is not possible, disable the New Mail Desktop Alert. Do this by going to Tools, Options, Preferences tab and clicking the Email Options button, then Advanced E-mail Options button. Uncheck the box next to Display a New Mail Desktop Alert.
Or you could configure the content filter in your antivirus application to filter out messages with "Meeting Forward Notifications" in the subject line, removing them from the message stream.
Administrator solution
Administrators can run a cmdlet in the EMS that will move the meeting forward notifications to the organizer's Deleted Item folder after they are processed by the calendar attendant. The cmdlet to change the setting for all the mailboxes is:
litzi says
will the organzer see the body of message I have included in the forwarded meeting or will they just be notified that I have forwarded an invite?
Diane Poremsky says
They will just be notified that it was forwarded.
Joanne Matson says
Is there a way to set up a meeting in Outlook so that it cannot be forwarded to other people's calendars? I manage meetings for a large group of people and need to manage who is invited. I can't do that when folks can forward the invite to others. Any way to stop that?
Diane Poremsky says
No, not unless you use Information Rights Management (IRM) server an d I'm not 100% sure it would help either.
Beverly says
I do not want the organizer to know that I have forwarded his/her meeting and to whom I have forwarded it. How do I prevent the organizer from receiving the notification that his/her meeting has been forwarded?
Diane Poremsky says
Unfortunately, unless the admin or the organizer has the feature disable, you can't avoid it. You can try forwarding it as an attachment (open new message, insert meeting) - I forget if that will trigger the warning, so you'll need to test it. (It didn't in a quickie test in outlook 2013.)
That said, you really shouldn't forward meetings without the permission of the organizer, but i realize there are valid reasons (like to move meetings to a personal calendar) where you don't want the organizer to get the alert. Better would be a macro that copied the meeting to an appointment. I should have code here to do that - if not, I'll put one together.