Automatically Tentatively Add Calendar Events in Microsoft Entourage
Microsoft Entourage Calendar Preferences
If you’re looking for a way to automatically tentatively add calendar invitations when received in Microsoft Entourage, there’s a calendar preference option defined to perform just this behavior…
If you’re a popular individual, you may find coworkers fighting for a free timeslot on your calendar. Naturally, you want to provide folks with the most up-to-date view of your calendar while their examining your availability for a meeting as well as give yourself a quick view of which hours of your calendar have been requested to attend a meeting.
Caveat:This feature only works with non-Exchange mailboxes (i.e. POP, IMAP, etc.)
To this end, the “Tentatively add events when invitations are received” option of the Preferences–>Calendar tab may give you just the behavior you’re looking for (see screenshot).
Take note of the “non-Exchange calendars only” snippet behind this option. Sadly, Entourage adds incoming meeting invites as tentative to your calendar only when you are connecting to a POP, IMAP, etc. type of mail account and not if you’re connecting to an Exchange mailbox.
The good news is that if you’re connecting to an Exchange 2007-based mailbox, the Exchange 2007 Calendar Attendant will will do that for you and Entourage has nothing to do with that. The Calendar Attendant processes meeting requests as they come in, even if you are not currently logged on by means of Entourage, Outlook or another client. Meetings are automatically placed on the calendar as tentative, so that timeslots will not be overbooked.
