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I accidentally clicked "decline" on an Outlook invitation and now I can't reverse it -- the event has completely disappeared from my calendar!

How can I get back the event invitation and change my "Decline" to "Accept" or "tentative"?

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  • 5
    Is the invite in your Deleted Items folder still?
    – Troggy
    Nov 19, 2009 at 18:47

7 Answers 7

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The invite should still be in the "Deleted Items" Folder. If you go there, you will see the Accept / Decline options again. Click the correct one.

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    In Outlook 2013 I can't find mine in the Deleted Items and I don't recall purging it. There is however one in my Sent Items where I replied when I declined, however it doesn't allow me to re-accept the meeting.
    – PeterX
    Oct 21, 2014 at 0:30
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    This doesn't work if you decline from the calendar app it seems...arg.
    – John Hunt
    Feb 12, 2020 at 6:57
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    In Outlook 365 Windows 10 it shows in sent items but the accept/decline options do not show in the ribbon :-( Moving to inbox has no effect.
    – boardtc
    Jun 23, 2021 at 15:09
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    I accidentally declined a single event that is part of a reoccurring event. However I did not want to decline it. Now it is removed and there is no trace of it in my mailbox Deleted Items nor Sent Items. You need to request a new invite from the organizer. Best what I could find from support microsoft: Show a declined meeting on my calendar
    – TessavWalstijn
    Sep 14, 2021 at 6:27
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    On Outlook for Mac I tried this and it still didn't reappear on my calendar. I then forwarded the meeting to myself and it reappeared.
    – ec2011
    Feb 3, 2022 at 23:20
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Declined meetings that are part of a series don't appear to show up in the Deleted Items folder. Also, copying from someone's calendar doesn't work with private calendars. In this scenario, there doesn't seem to be a way to accept the meeting other than having someone resend it.

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  • You can go back to the original deleted series request, re-accept it, then it should repopulate all declined occurrences in that series.
    – Preston
    Aug 30, 2017 at 14:21
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    I re-accepted a series of which I had declined one instance, and the declined instance didn't get re-added to my calendar.
    – BlueMonkMN
    Aug 22, 2018 at 14:36
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Microsoft writes that this issue is by design:

If a meeting request is declined, the meeting is not saved to your calendar and the meeting request message is moved to the Deleted Items folder.

There is no way to show a declined meeting on your calendar. You can only show accepted or tentative meetings on your calendar. To request this feature, go to Outlook UserVoice.

One relevant UserVoice request which can be upvoted is here.

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    The link is no longer available.
    – MiniGod
    Feb 16 at 10:57
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I went to the sender's calendar and clicked the "copy to calendar" button in the ribbon at the top (as described on this page). It prompted me to accept the invite - easy.

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    I get "you dont have appropriate permission to perform this operation"
    – BozoJoe
    Apr 3, 2020 at 4:24
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Once you declined, Outlook copies the 'declined' reply to your Sent Items. Outlook automatically places the original invitation into your Deleted Items. Unless you have your Outlook set to either 1) automatically empty the Deleted folder upon closing Outlook, or 2) you've manually purged the Deleted items folder, you should still have the original meeting invite in your Deleted items folder. Once you locate the original invite in the Deleted folder, you can open the invite and change your response.

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Periodically I accidentally delete a request before replying, and I've always had success with just dragging it out of Deleted Items back into the Inbox, then opening it and sending the reply of my choice. I'm not sure I've ever tried changing a response once sent, but all the response buttons do display, so it'd be worth a try.

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With a regular email you can go to the Sent Items folder and click Recall This Message and Exchange will attempt to recall it. That option does not seem to be available for an invitation to a metting. I also looked at Matthew's answer and my version of Outlook (2003) shows only the declined invite in the deleted folder. I do not have the option to change my response. I think all you can do is ask the sender to invite you again.

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