As an email manager application, Microsoft Outlook allows us to schedule activities and appointments. It enables us to stay organized by providing the facility to create, manage, and track these activities, also called events, within the Outlook application. However, unwanted events get added to the Calendar in Outlook at times, causing confusion for the users and spamming the Calendar. In this article, we explore the various scenarios and the steps that can help us prevent Outlook from adding events to my Calendar automatically.
Outlook Events – Brief Overview
Outlook events serve various purposes and have quite a few useful features, as detailed below:
- Calendar Integration: Events created in Outlook are linked with the in-built calendar, which helps us visualize the scheduled activities. We can view these events by sorting them day, week, or month-wise.
- Event Creation: Outlook events can be created by including or specifying details like date, time, duration, location, title, etc.
- Attendees, Invitations, and Reminders: Invitations can be sent out to others for participating in the events through emails, wherein attendees can accept, reject, or propose changes to the schedule. Reminder notifications can also be sent out through Outlook to keep us aware and updated on the schedule.
- Integration and Synchronization: The events created can be integrated with contacts or tasks, helping us manage our tasks effectively. They can also be synchronized across multiple mobile, desktop, or web devices to allow accessibility through multiple platforms.
How do I prevent Outlook from adding Events to my Calendar Automatically
Microsoft Outlook includes a built-in scanning feature that automatically adds events to the Calendar based on the contents of the emails sent or received. However, modifying the settings within the Outlook application, web access, or through Windows PowerShell can prevent it from adding the events automatically, as mentioned below:
- Change event settings from the Outlook application
- Modify event settings in Outlook Web Access
- Through Windows PowerShell
1] Change Event Settings from Outlook Application
Outlook Application provides the option through which we can modify the event settings to ensure that events are not added to the Outlook mail account automatically by following the below-mentioned steps:
- Log on to the email account in Outlook.
- Click on File > Options.
- Once the Options window opens, click on the Mail.
- Navigate to the Tracking section on the right pane and uncheck the option—Automatically add events to my calendar from email.
- Click OK to apply the changes made.
Restart Outlook and check if the issue has been resolved or not.
2] Modify Event Settings in Outlook Web Access
In case we are using the web version of Outlook, the below-mentioned steps can be followed to change the event settings:
- Visit Outlook.live.com and sign in using your Microsoft account.
- Click the Gear icon on the top right to open the Settings menu.
- Click on View all Outlook settings option at the bottom right.
- Click on the Calendar section on the left, followed by Events from email on the right.
- Select the option, Only show event summaries in email, to stop adding the events automatically to the Calendar.
- Click on Save to apply the changes made.
Note: If Outlook is configured for multiple email accounts, the above steps must be repeated for each. However, events added before making the above changes will remain until they are deleted manually.
3] Through Windows PowerShell
- Connect to Exchange Online PowerShell
- Enter and run the command:
Get-Mailbox | Set-MailboxCalendarConfiguration -EventsFromEmailEnabled $false
In the above command:
Get-Mailbox: Retrieves the information for mailboxes from the Exchange Server.
| (Pipe): The symbol is used to pass the cmdlet output on its left.
Set-MailboxCalendarConfiguration: is used to configure the Calendar settings of the mailbox retrieved from the Get-Mailbox command.
EventsFromEmailEnabled $false: This particular command sets the parameter of the EventsFromEmailEnabled to False. This ensures that the Calendar events created from the events of the specified mailbox are disabled.
I hope this post helps.
How do I stop people from adding dates and appointments to my calendar?
We can set a new rule in Outlook wherein meeting requests or appointments sent by specific people or public groups would be automatically restricted.
How to stop Outlook from adding unwanted online meetings to newly scheduled calendar events?
You can stop by unchecking the Add online meeting to all events under the Calendar options.
