Automatically process and delete empty Meeting Responses and other empty Receipts from your Inbox

I frequently host meetings (seminars) where I invite quite a lot of people. The Accept/Decline/Tentative receipts then quickly fill my mailbox.

I don’t really care about these responses until closer to the signup deadline and even then I use the Tracking button that is shown within the Meeting item and not all the receipts.

How can I disable these email notifications and just see the responses on the Tracking tab of the meeting?

Tracking buttonWhile you can disable the email notifications that people send you when they accept, decline or tentatively accept your meeting request, this will also take away the possibility to track any responses since you didn’t get any.

However, Outlook does have tracking options to automatically process and delete any empty receipts that you get.

Tracking Options

After setting these tracking options, the receipts that you receive are pretty much instantly processed and moved to your Deleted Items folder.

  • File-> Options-> Mail-> section: Tracking-> options:
    • Automatically process meeting requests and responses to meeting requests and polls
    • Update tracking information, and then delete responses that don’t contain comments

By adjusting your Tracking options, you can automatically delete empty Meeting responses without losing the tracking functionality.
By adjusting your Tracking options, you can automatically delete empty Meeting responses without losing the tracking functionality.

The only receipts that will still land in your Inbox folder are the ones that contain additional feedback text or questions written in the response by the meeting invitee.

At all times, you can still see the responses from everybody by opening the Meeting from you Calendar and pressing the Tracking button (Outlook 2019 and previous) or selecting the Tracking tab (Outlook as part of a Microsoft 365 subscription).

See who has accepted or declined your Meeting Invitation by selecting the Tracking tab in the Ribbon.
See who has accepted or declined your Meeting Invitation by selecting the Tracking tab in the Ribbon in Microsoft 365 or…

See who has accepted or declined your Meeting Invitation by clicking on the Tracking button in the Ribbon.
…by clicking on the Tracking button in Outlook 2019 and previous.

Note:
This setting also applies to other receipts that can be processed by Outlook such as read/delivery receipts and responses to emails for which you have used Voting Buttons.

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