Change Outlook Recurring Appointments without Losing Your History
In the old days, before everyone had a personal computer, paper appointment books provided a permanent record of what we did when. Sometimes that’s useful – sometimes you need to refer back. Today, I use Outlook on the PC and Pocket PC to keep track of my appointments. And when things are electronic, there is the potential for problems.
I have a recurring weekly appointment in Outlook, and I wanted to change the time of the appointment. That should be easy, right? You’d think you could change all the times going forward? But noooooo. Outlook warns you that if you make a change, all exceptions will be lost. But actually, it’s worse than that. It changes the time of every appointment – including appointments that occurred in the past. Happily I found a workaround.
This tip comes from a site devoted to Outlook tips. It’s a great site – I’ve used it before. Here’s what you do.
Export your calendar folder to an Excel file. (And when you’re done with that, close Outlook and make a backup copy of your .PST file, just in case of disaster – you never know.) The export function doesn’t support recurring appointments, and for our purposes, this is a good thing! It allows you to convert the dates you want to keep into non-recurring, individual appointments.
Edit the Excel file to contain just the recurring appointment between the dates you want to keep. This is easy to do if you sort on the appointment subject. Delete everything that is not the recurring appointment. Then import the edited Excel file back into Outlook. If you have long notes, you may need to copy and paste them into the non-recurring version since there’s a length limit for exports.
When you’ve assured yourself that all is well, delete the recurring appointment, then create a new recurring appointment for the new time (or just stop at deleting, if there are no more appointments in the future). Problem solved!
Martin Hanson:
This has been a long standing annoyance for me with Outlook reoccurring appointments–so much so that I have tended to avoid using them at all. I found your work around from a Microsoft forum, but it really doesn’t work well for me.
I use the Outlook appointment notes field to take notes during that appointment–therefore they are stored with the appointment. I also often attach files (Word, EXCEL, PDF, etc.) of the meeting agenda, handouts, etc. in the Appointment. These attachments are lost, as well as longer notes, when the EXPORT function is used.
I keep about two years of past appointments in my active PST file. If I had an appointment that was reoccurring during that period and I had attachments, and I had long notes, and I had modified the date/time of some of those appointments, there is NO good way to change these appointments back without recreating individual appointments.
So, I now setup a reoccurring when I know the pattern, but I am careful to never attach a file or include notes in those appointments. When that appointment comes up, I create a new individual appointment for my notes and attachments. Does clutter my calendar a bit with duplicate appointments.
I wish there was a conversation command/program that would take reoccurring appointments, save the notes and attachments and save them as individual appointments. If anyone knows of any; I would be most appreciative.
April 30, 2009, 10:35 amMartin Hanson:
… also, wouldn’t this exporting trick/tip destroy other reoccurring appointments or do you edit the EXCEL file to delete any appointments that you don’t want to change during the import. Must have to do this otherwise wouldn’t it create duplicates of all appointments and destroy the reoccurring ones?
April 30, 2009, 10:56 amSheryl Canter:
You’re right – there are limits. It’s really a bad bug in the way Microsoft implements this. I wish they’d fix it.
And yes, I do edit the Excel file.
April 30, 2009, 11:20 amChris Meyers:
Thanks Sheryl – good tip tho like others above just doesn’t work for me. Why did we ever move away from GroupWise where many of the “issues” in Outlook were resolved years ago.
I currently handle this problem by only creating recurring appointments that extend out no more than one year. All my recurring appointments end the first week of January. I spend one day that first week of January cleaning up my calendar and re-issuing all my recurring appts.
When I need to change the day/time of a recurring appt (almost all mine are weekly or monthly), I just delete the individual appts going forward. Tedious and silly yes (thank you Microsoft), but I do get to keep my history.
c
November 5, 2009, 8:52 amtest:
No. Recurring appointments are single calendar entries, with the
recurrences being calculated from the base appointment. When you add an
exception, Outlook keeps a list for the one item of where the calculation is
to be modified. When you perform certain actions in a recurring appointment
(like set an end date), it causes Outlook to regenerate the series, which
resets the exceptions list.
Here’s how I’d do it. I’ve tested this, so I know it works. Create a new
calendar folder. Display your original calendar in a table view like Active
Appointments. Find your recurring appointment in the list, click it, and
drag it to the new calendar folder. The entire appointment will move to
that calendar, exceptions and all. Then click File>Import and Export>Export
to a file. Choose some format like “Comma Separated Values (Windows)” -
that’s what I used. Select the new calendar folder with its single entry.
Since recurring items can’t be exported (there’s no way to represent the
recurrence in the exported data), Outlook will prompt you to select the time
frame over which it should export. Select the start date to match the
beginning of the recuurring appointment and an end date matching the date at
which you want it to end. Exporting your calendar from the start of the
original recurring item to its planned end date will give you a file
containing the original appointment and its exceptions as individual
entries.
Delete the original appointment from your main calendar to clear it out, and
import the file you just created, which will import the appointment back and
include all the exceptions. Since you chose an end date on the export, your
original appointment will stop there, but all your exceptions will be
intact. You can then create a new recurring appointment from the new time
onward. You can also delete the extra calendar folder you created, since
you now have the information you wanted in your main calendar again.
You don’t really need to create a second calenar folder if you don’t want
December 17, 2009, 11:20 amto, but then you’d have to edit the export file to remove everything but the
one appointment series, and I would find using a temporary second calendar
folder easier because I don’t have to sort through all the items I don’t
want.
Cathy Sleeva:
How would this work if you have others attending the meetings? I as well try to use Outlook as my history on meetings that I create as well as those that are created by others. Because of this issue I now need to save all the documents attached to meetings. I wish Microsoft would fix this bug!
January 28, 2010, 12:27 pmSheryl Canter:
Cathy, if I were relying on Outlook in this way, I would never ever use the recurring appointment option. I’d enter each appointment manually. That way you won’t ever lose anything.
January 29, 2010, 1:01 amRyan:
Here is what I do when I need to change the date, time, location, or attendees of a recurring meeting for all dates moving forward, and I don’t want to lose my history. I update the recurrance of the existing meeting and put in an end date. Send out an update. Then I copy the meeting to the next date on my calendar that I plan to have the meeting, make all the changes, then turn on recurring again and set the criteria. Then send it out again as a new meeting. Now not only is it preserved on my calendar, it’s preserved on all the calendars of the attendees. I do agree the MS needs to fix this, but this does work for me.
May 4, 2010, 8:22 amAllison:
Ryan, I just tried your solution and it didn’t work. My recurring meeting currently has no end date. If I edit the series and put in an end date, Outlook informs me that it is going to remove all the exceptions to my meeting. So I will lose my history.
May 6, 2010, 9:22 amAllison:
Test – your solution worked. I was nervous about all the moving of appointments and importing and exporting but everything went just as you said and it worked.
It has converted my meetings with attendees to meetings without attendees, but this doesn’t matter to me since it was a one-on-one recurring meeting (i.e. only one other attendee). I can now update the original meeting request (which is now in my new calendar folder), send it, then copy it back into my main calendar.
Thanks very much!
May 6, 2010, 9:39 amanon:
Wow… This is lame… Is this fixed in Outlook 2010…?
May 6, 2010, 11:24 pmWarren:
I am trying to use the method suggested by ‘test’. I am using Outlook 2007…when I attempt to export to a file, the steps match the instructions outlined; however, each time the ‘export’ begins, I get an error box indicating that Outlook has encountered a problem and must shut down…sorry for the inconvenience. Is there a ‘bug’ with exporting information using Outlook 2007?
July 22, 2010, 10:33 am