Recurring appointments generate a lot of complaints from users. When you attempt to change the end date, you'll receive a warning that the exceptions will be lost:
I have a reoccurring appointment that was created with “No end date” years ago. There have been many times when meetings got moved around due to vacations or scheduling conflicts. Now when I attempt to change the end date – I get the message “Any exceptions associated with this recurring appointment will be cancelled. Is this OK?” So how do I end it and keep the past dates for reference?
When you end a recurring appointment or cancel future events in a recurring meeting, any exceptions (including notes in individual occurrences or appointments/meetings moved to different dates) are wiped out, the dates are reset to the default recurrence pattern and all history is lost.
You can use VBA to convert a series to individual appointments. See Copy Recurring Appointment Series to Appointments for the code.
I have no idea why Microsoft didn't add warnings about recurring events at the time users create them, because it could save users a lot of headaches. Although I'm sure many users would ignore the warning anyway...
Many people never make exceptions so ending a never-ending appointment is not always a problem - its only a problem if you either add notes to occurrences rather than the series (which many people do when they make notes about a meeting) or move an occurrence to a new date and need a record of these dates.
I have meetings that run every week on the same day, and usually at the same time. I do not know many details much more in advance than the week before. I have set up a reoccurring event for them to continue indefinitely (my first mistake) and each week when I get details, I enter that in to the individual occurrences. I have several months worth that I've been working like this.Now I need to end the meetings. However, modifying the recurrence pattern to stop on any given day resets ALL events in the past back to the default. That is simply ridiculous. There has got to be a way to cancel these events and not lose that information.
Yes, there is one way to end the occurrences and not lose the information in the past events: Export to CSV or Excel format and import.
To avoid problems in the future, set end dates and do not create recurring appointments longer than 1 year.
Ending a Recurring Appointment
If you don't have exceptions, you only need to change the end date to end the series.
- Open the series
- Open the Recurrence dialog
- Change the end date to end the series
- Save and Close
Exceptions
Any time you move an occurrence or add notes to a single occurrence, you are creating an exception. When you set or change the end date, Outlook regenerates the appointment and all notes or changes are lost.
When the event has exceptions and you attempt to change the end date, Outlook will warn you that the exceptions will be lost; if you aren't warned, there are no exceptions in the series.
Solution: Export to Excel or CSV then Import
If you need to cancel future events and keep the exceptions or history intact you can Export to Excel or CSV format then Import back into Outlook. Exporting breaks the recurring event into individual appointments, preserving date changes and any notes added to individual dates. Using a macro to create the individual events can save you a couple of steps. Get the macro code from Copy Recurring Appointment Series to Appointments
While you can skip the first step, if you do so, you'll need to delete all the other appointments before importing.
Step 1:
Create a new calendar folder and move the recurring event it to. (Otherwise, you need to edit the exported file to remove all the other appointments.)
To create a new folder, right click on the Calendar folder and choose New Folder, select "Calendar Items" in the "folder contains" drop-down and type in a name for your calendar. Use a list view (such as all appointments) in the old calendar folder then find and drag the recurring event to the new calendar.
Step 2:
Export the calendar to CSV format, setting the desired end date in the export.
In Outlook 2010, Go to File, Open, Import. In Outlook 2007 and older, open the File, Import and Export command. Choose Export to a file and click Next, choosing "Comma Separated Values" as the output format. When Outlook asks which folder to export, select the new calendar folder. Outlook will tell you it can't export a recurring event and ask you to specify a range. Give the starting date of the event, and the ending date after which the event should cease. Finish the wizard.
Step 3:
If you didn't move the recurring event to a new calendar, open the export file in Excel and delete the other appointments then save and close.
Otherwise, you are ready to import the file to the default calendar. Open the Import and Export wizard and choose Import from a file. Select "Comma separated values", browse to the file you created before, select it, and finish the wizard, specifying your main Calendar as the destination.
The events will be added to your calendar as individual items and include all the exceptions. After you are satisfied everything is OK, delete the event or delete the new calendar. This is one click to remove all- all dates associated with the event are removed at once. Copies of the old events remain because you imported them as individual events.
To avoid sending cancellations notices, set Outlook offline when you delete a recurring meeting series then delete the updates from the outbox before going online. Send the invitees an email telling to delete the event and how to save the old events if they need the history.
Notes
There are limitations to the size of an exported Notes field. If you have extensive notes in the appointment, they may not be included in the new items. Verify the note field is complete before deleting the original.
If the recurring appointment does not have any exceptions (date or time changes, or notes in some appointments), you can just change the end date, unless you want to break the recurring appointment into individual appointments.
How to End a Recurring Appointment Video Tutorial
Recommendations
Always set an end date on recurring appointments and meetings. I suggest always using the end of the calendar year. This way, all of the recurring events are ending at the same time, making it easier to review all of the meetings or appointments at once. You'll need to create new recurring appointments (don't change the end date of the existing events), making changes as needed. If the recurrence is frequent, such as weekly, or it changes frequently, you should consider a shorter time period for the recurrence, such as no longer than 10 – 12 occurrences.
theDavidSlight says
I thought I had a clever solution setting the PatternEndDate (which in a Master recurring appointment goes to the year 4500 - obviously when the world will end) to next week or similar.
The future recurring meeting end dates were set and all was fine.
But then seems something runs and resets the PatternEndDate back to 4500 for some of the entries - could this sync is the appointment is owned by someone else?
bob says
have tasks that started in 2008 and continue.. can't delete the old ones . It says do you want to delete all future tasks. I don't just the ones that are done
Liza says
Hi all - I tried all of these steps, but when I try to import the CSV file, it won't let me click "next" to finish the import. Any advice???
Diane Poremsky says
Click in the blue box so it is checked, not just blue, and see if that works.
Nick W. says
So this thread started in 2012 and according to the first comment, this has "...exited for years and is the subject on massive feedback on Microsoft's feedback." Fast forward to 2021 and as far as I can tell there is still no solution. My interpretation: MS have no intention of ever fixing this.
ps. The trick of using an iPhone to seems only viable if you have a work iPhone, since you must give the exchange admin full rights over your phone including the ability to wipe it!!
Leanna says
Hi Diane,
Your article and answers have been invaluable to me. I really appreciate you taking the time to put together a whole macro just for these never-ending series.
I do have a few questions. The series I am trying to end is a meeting between two people going all the way back to August 2017. One of the attendees is my manager who has given me editing rights on his calendar. For the other attendee, I can only see the free/busy/subject/location setting for each of her appointments.
Using your macro, I modified the code to work perfectly on my calendar. Would the macro work if I used it on my manager's shared calendar from my computer? And would Outlook crash performing a macro on more than 3 years of data?
I probably can give the other attendee instructions on how to perform the macro on her calendar once I have more information.
Thanks so much!
What's the format says
iPhone Trick:
Someone in another forum posted an easy solution for anyone who uses an iPhone synced to the relevant Outlook account. My work issues iPhones for work use, and was frustrated by this problem with Outlook (trying to end a recurring event that had not begun with an end date), so I tried it, and it appears to work.
For some reason, if you use the calendar app on the iPhone to make the change to the recurring event, at least for changing the end date, it does not affect the modified content of the past events. Now I can use this trick to put an end date to an open-ended recurring appointment, and not lose changes or notes made to previous occurrences
cat says
This worked for me!!! So happy; thank you!
Junia Melo says
Hi Diane. I wish I had looked for and read this post BEFORE I did what I did this morning: I changed the end date of a series of recurring weekly appointments on my Calendar (Outlook 2016, University Office 365 account; Exchange service). As they indeed had exceptions, I got the warning that these would be cancelled... but not that the entire series would be deleted!!! So, now I have lost all the entries for that appointment which did occur from Jan 2016 until Mar 2020 (and they ceased to exist due to COVID-19...)! And they are not in the Deleted Items folder of my Mailbox either.
Is there a way they can be recovered? Please say 'Yes'!...
JP Lovewell says
I've imported a long list of recurring (yearly) events from Excel to my Outlook calendar (these are employee birthdays and anniversaries). I've been able to use an advanced view to group the Calendar by Recurrence and then move the appointments to the yearly group, but the appointments still do not show up on the Calendar for this year. I found that while I added recurrence to the appointments, I didn't change the Recurring value to Yes for these appointments. I tried the same process to move the appointments to the Yes group, but it wouldn't allow me to drag them (even individually) to the Yes group. Is there a way to bulk-change all of these events to change them to Recurring: Yes?
Diane Poremsky says
its not an editable field, so you can't drag to a group.... you can try a macro. The second one on the page at https://www.slipstick.com/developer/code-samples/working-items-folder-selected-items/ works with selected items... but i just checked it and isrecurring is a read only value. Redemption should take care of that (it can allow you to write to most read-only fields), but i don't have a version that uses redemption.
Hemal says
Can you update for Outlook 2016? Dragging from one folder to another creates a copy in this version, with prefix "Copy: ". So after exporting from new folder and importing in main calendar I had three appointments, 2 of which were recurring. Not a big deal, but slightly confusing.
Diane Poremsky says
Did you move the meeting? Outlook has always added Copy to meetings when they are imported or copied, but should not when its moved.
bollard says
I did the steps above, created an empty calendar, moved the recurring appointments there, exported to Excel, and then imported to the live calendar. It imported all the appointments, times and history fine.
However all the "required attendees" fields are blank. It seems there is a known issue that Outlook will not import attendees from an csv file.
Is there a way to import the attendees?
Thank you.
Diane Poremsky says
No, csv won't add attendees because you would need to send it. The method here is used to create a history of older events before ending an appointment. I have a macro that will create individual events from a recurring series - it could be programmed to put the attendees in the notes field. (It could add them as attendees, but you'd need to send them.)
The macro is here - https://www.slipstick.com/developer/copy-recurring-appointments-meetings-series/
bertie says
Here we are at 2017'end and Microsoft has not fixed this for 10 years... incredible.
At least they should allow the owner to select a recurring meeting and choose "end now" to end the serie. Up to the user to create a new meeting if the frequency or something else changed.
Diane Poremsky says
the owner can end it by setting a date, but it will eliminate any exceptions.
Kristin says
You are so right!
Lotus Notes had the functions to chose from "apply to this, "apply to all" and "Apply to all future Events" since more than ten years. It is completely incomprehensible why Outlook is not in the position to do the same. In particular, if they strive to sell Outlook to large companies, who have to deal with a lot of Meetings in parallel, and who may need to keep trace of the participants of past meetings for their Audit trails.
Diane Poremsky says
Changes are coming... but I don't know when or if they will be what we want. (Microsoft has a habit of trying but not quite getting there.)
Christa says
Hi, I set up a recurring meeting with no end date as well, and have been adding a lot of revision to different date of the same meeting. now I created the end date and also canceled the event eventually. But somehow it still shows on my boss's gmail calendar when my outlook event is no longer there. Please help!
Diane Poremsky says
It sounds like gmail didn't honor the cancellation notice. It will need to be deleted manually.
Tom says
Hello,
If I, as the owner of a recurring meeting, make changes to the meeting series to prompt exceptions to be lost, will that also automatically delete the exceptions on all invitee's accounts as well? For example if an invitee to my recurring meeting take notes in an occurrence of the meeting on their own account, will me as the owner choosing to delete exceptions also delete the notes of the invitee in their accounts?
Thanks for any help you can provide. Your site is very useful!
Diane Poremsky says
Yes, it will, when the update arrives, it will replace the recurring event with the new event.
Catrice says
Hello is there a way to set a limit to how far in advance you can set up a recurring event. I need to limit how far in advance or how many recurrences are able to be booked.
Diane Poremsky says
You can use a reg entry (or GPO) to disable no end date and set resources to limit the number of occurrences.
https://www.slipstick.com/outlook/calendar/encourage-users-to-set-end-date-on-recurring-appointments/
Resource mailboxes: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd335046(v=exchg.160).aspx
Ayush Kumar says
I want to restrict delete and edit past day recurring events. I tried everything from javascript to custom code. If i stopped the past editing then it will apply the same changes in future recurrence as well which is not my requirement. Any suggestion to restrict past recurrence only.
Diane Poremsky says
There is no foolproof way to prevent editing - the easiest way in a shared calendar is to change permissions - but its always going to apply to the entire calendar. You could probably use VBA to - but it's simple to bypass it.
Ron G says
I have a number of end users with really old recurring meeting listed in their calendar which will not delete or archive. The recurring meeting request are from other staff so they don't have access to change the start and end dates. In fact none have end dates because the meetings times and dates don't change. So now all the prior meetings are now taking up a large amount of users inbox space. How can the old meetings of the recurring appointment be deleted without deleting the recurring appointment.
Diane Poremsky says
The organizer would need to make the change and send updates. Or the user copies the meeting as an appointment and sets up the recurrences (so the time is blocked off) then deletes the original one. If the organizer sends updates, it will be recreated on their calendar. (This is one reason why there should be a policy to limit recurring meetings either by number of meetings or dates. My preference is no more than 1 year or 10
Jon says
I was following your process steps in outlook 365. However, after step 2, I took a look at the exported csv file in notepad++. there are only five events, at rather random dates, when there should be 16. some of the five should have modified locations and don't. Sometimes even the simple things don't work!
Dave says
I tried this, but for some reason the appointments with exceptions are not exporting. They are in the alternate calendar, but only the reoccurring appointments are exporting. Any thoughts or suggestions? I still have all the data in an alternate calendar. I just need to merge it to the new one!
lee212014 says
I have a reoccurring appointment that was created with “No end date” years ago. There have been many times when meetings got moved around due to vacations or scheduling conflicts. Now when I attempt to change the end date – I get the message “Any exceptions associated with this recurring appointment will be cancelled. Is this OK?” So how do I end it and keep the past dates for reference?
>>> How do you recover what has already been deleted??
Diane Poremsky says
You'll need to export the appointments to csv or use a macro to convert the dates to appointments
the macro is here - https://www.slipstick.com/developer/copy-recurring-appointments-meetings-series/
Bibiana Davies says
I'm thankful that Diane takes the time to address these questions. I'm sure she doesn't have to. I hope she sticks around for the polite people. The workaround tutorial worked for me, but I didn't have attachments or extensive notes within my appointments. I also had found a script to run that changed the default from "No end date" to I think about 2 years? Which made it easy for me to put placeholders in the spots where staff wanted their appts booked into, then export, import and presto. I'm good to go. Thank you, Diane, very much. I wish that the default would be shorter, at least then you can they won't go on indefinitely.
Diane Poremsky says
You can disable no end date and set max length using GPO or a registry edit.
https://www.slipstick.com/outlook/calendar/encourage-users-to-set-end-date-on-recurring-appointments/
Johna says
This is one of the times when I wish Microsoft would get out of their ivory tower and join the real world. This is an extremely BAD set up for anyone dependent on the information in their calendar. The warning doesn't tell you that all details and changes will be lost and it doesn't explain how to save the information before you print go. Also there is no way to back up. The steps you have recommended will work but they shouldn't have to. There should be some way to recover the deleted information.
Lynne says
The way I usually handle this is that I end the series and create a new series with the new date/time. My meeting usually always have end dates already, this is just updating it so that the history of the meeting stays on the calendar. It's true that the exceptions are lost, and any notes (although I do not use the meeting invites for attachments or notes just for that purpose - I will include links, but not attachments). I feel that this is at least preserves the history of the meeting instead of wiping it completely off the calendar like it never happened.
Deb Mattsen says
Is Microsoft reading any of these?
Diane Poremsky says
They do occasionally and I pass along comments to them.
Deb Mattsen says
Exactly. Come on Microsoft! I use this calendar for scheduling recurring jobs at a clients property and it works beautifully.....except when they want to change from 4-weekly to 2-weekly. This itself is easy to do. I just end the 4-wkly recurrence and start a new 2-weekly recurring for them.. but it would be great not to lose the various notes and things I have written on some of the appts, like " guests in this time, please knock first". The history of this sort of thing just disappears when I end that recurring schedule. What a pain and honestly Microsoft if shouldn't be that hard to fix such a thing. Does Windows 7 deal with it???
Diane Poremsky says
No, Windows 7 won't make a difference in how outlook works. (I have no idea if the windows 7 calendar app handles it better, but it won't be much help if you need to use outlook.)
Peter Martin says
Hi, would you know if there is any way to undo the changes and restore all the occurences and my edited notes, now that they've been wiped out? Does exchange back it up somewhere? I've just lost seven months of daily work progress and notes.
Diane Poremsky says
Unfortunately, unless you have a backup, they are lost - neither outlook or exchange keeps an "undo" file. You can speak to your administrator, he may be willing and able to recover your calendar from the server backups.
Carl Thoreson says
I have a slightly different issue with recurring appointments. Appointment is set up by Delegate A on User A's calendar, with User B invited. Meeting does not exist on Delegate's calendar. Meeting reoccurs every Tuesday at 2 PM. After the meeting, Delegate A enters notes about the meeting into the occurrence for that day along with agenda items for the next week's meeting. Delegate copies and pastes those notes into the occurrence for the next week.
If I look at Delegates computer and Outlook I see all the notes from every occurrence, But, if I open Outlook on User A's computer and look at the occurrence on his calendar, the notes don't show up. Delegate swears that User A used to be able to see the notes, but they are not visible now.
Any ideas?
Elizabeth Svetlik says
The previous version of Outlook allowed you to create a new end date for recurrences and not lose all of the previous exceptions...it was MUCH easier to use! I do not like Outlook 2013 for precisely this reason.
Diane Poremsky says
I'm not sure what version you had before, but Outlook has always regenerated the appointment (which wipes out exceptions) when you change the dates.
Bibiana Davies says
FAN-FREAKING-TASTIC. The Export to Excel has made my life beautiful. Bless your widdle heart, Diane Poremsky....I have been querying our IMIT department for years about this one, but you are the only one who actually gave up the goods. GOOD ON YOU! MVP EXTRAORDINAIRE! * clap clap clap clap *
Louise Lindsay says
Outlook should study the old Palm calendar system- it worked much more smoothly. I have recurring weekly appointments that go on unpredictably, and then end, or sometimes are cancelled for only one week. It is very cumbersome to enter them all each week (or have a short recurrence date)-- or to use the import export trick every time one appointment is changed. This is a major flaw in the program as far as I am concerned. Time consuming and confusing. What I now do is leave the recurring appointment intact, but in a second calendar, placed on top of the main one, I add all exception appointments and notes. Still it is confusing, because then 1 p.m. Wed. may have an appointment for x, that has actually been cancelled and a second appt. for y with a note that x is cancelled. This is lousy, but it's what I've worked out, and I learned the hard way that all my back cancelled and changed appointments were lost when I stopped a recurrence. Quite a shock when I first discovered this.
Jeremy Browne says
The best solution is for Microsoft not to sell stuff that doesn't work.
Diane Poremsky says
Well... it works, just not like we think it should, so it's a design issue. They need to not sell stuff that is poorly designed. :)
Mark Laforest says
This problem has exited for years and is the subject on massive feedback on Microsoft's feedback.
Your "work around" via Export and Import doesnt solve the past occurrences that have attachments.
The attachments will be lost.
It is also too difficult for a basic office staff person who dont know anything about Excel or Exporting & Importing.
Frankly, its just poor design on Microsoft's part and they should write a fix in Office 2012 (whenever that comes out).
Thanks anyway for documenting and videoing the "part" solution.
Diane Poremsky says
I don't expect a fix in Outlook 15, but will file a bug report for it. I'd at least like to see the default being 10 events, not no end date. That would help a lot as many people just click the dialog without thinking about it. It is possible for the admin to force end dates using group policy or disable no end date for OWA users (but not Outlook users).
The best solution is to not make never-ending meetings, especially if you are going to make exceptions. Common sense says employees rarely stay in the same workgroup forever, let alone with the same company. For this reason, I recommend ending meetings at the end of the calendar or fiscal year, or quarterly if the meetings are frequent. If you need to end a meeting early you can create exceptions by deleting the last few.