A meeting request is stamped as Busy instead of Tentative when it is sent from an external user to an Exchange Server 2007 user

An external user sends a meeting request to a Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 user who is using Microsoft Office Outlook 2003. In this situation, the meeting request is stamped as Busy in the calendar of the Exchange Server 2007 user. However, the meeting request should be stamped as Tentative until the Exchange Server 2007 user accepts or declines it.

This problem occurs because Exchange Server 2007 converts the meeting request from the iCalendar format to the MAPI format and sets the corresponding field to Busy. Exchange Server 2007 does this because of the following line in iCalendar format. However, Outlook 2003 directly uses this field value in the Show time as field in calendar. Instead, Outlook 2007 converts a Busy status to a Tentativestatus. Therefore, this issue does not occurs for Outlook 2007.

For Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1)

To resolve this issuein an Exchange Server 2007 SP1 environment, install the following update rollup:

For Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 3 (SP3)

To resolve this issue in an Exchange Server 2007 SP3 environment, install the following update rollup: Important If your computer is running Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2, we recommend that you upgrade it to Exchange Server 2007 SP3, and then install Update Rollup 3 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 3.

To work around this problem, use Outlook 2007 as the client software.

For more information about iCalendar and X-MICROSOFT-CDO-BUSYSTATUS, visit the following Microsoft Web site: For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: