Scheduling a Meeting

In Outlook, a meeting includes other people and can include resources such as conference rooms. You’ll get responses to your meeting requests in your Inbox.


  • In a Calendar folder, choose New Meeting.

    Calendar new meeting

Keyboard shortcut:    To create a new meeting request from any folder in Outlook, press Ctrl+Shift+Q.


  1. Create a meeting request in one of the following ways:

    • From the Inbox, select New Items > Meeting or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + Q.

      To schedule a meeting, on the Home tab, in the New group, choose New Items, and then Meeting.

    • From the calendar, select New Meeting or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + Q.
      New Meeting command on the ribbon

    • From an email message in the Inbox, select the Reply with Meeting button.
      From an email message, select reply wtih meeting.

  2. Add attendees in one of two ways:

    • Add your attendees to the To line of the meeting request and skip to step 4.

    • If you're using an Office 365 or an Exchange account, use the Scheduling Assistant to see attendee schedules.

  3. In the Scheduling Assistant, either click the box under your name and type an attendee's name or email address or click the Add Attendees button to bring up your address book.

    Click the icon next to the attendee's name in the Scheduling Assistant to mark a specific attendee as a Required Attendee ,Optional Attendee, or a Resource. When you start typing a attendee's name, Outlook will provide suggestions for you based on the people you've met with or emailed recently. Choose a name from the list to add an attendee.

    You can mark attendees as required or optional.

  4. Add a meeting subject, start time and end time, and location.

    In Outlook 2016 and Outlook for Office 365, you can start typing a location's name, for example, Fourth Coffee Shop or Conference Room 23, and Outlook will look for location matches. Select one of the suggestions to choose that location, or continue typing to enter another location.

  5. To attach a file to a meeting request, on the Insert menu, select Attach File, then choose the file you want to add.

  6. If you don't want to make this a recurring meeting, click Send.

  7. Otherwise, Click Meeting > Recurrence, then click Send. 


*Note: When you add a recurrence pattern to a meeting request, the Meeting tab changes to Meeting Series.