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Unable to accept ics invitations from Outlook and confirm attendance on iPhone running iOS 9 branch, why?

dejanh

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Jan 3, 2015
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Unable to accept ics invitations from Outlook and confirm attendance on iPhone running iOS 9 branch

For some reason I cannot actually confirm attendance to any meeting requests that originate from Outlook. When I receive an invitation, it shows up as an ics attachment in the Mail app, and from there when I tap on the attachment I can add it to my calendar, but adding it to the calendar does not confirm attendance to the requester. In fact, the only option I have is "Add to calendar" or nothing. I cannot do the normal "Accept", "Tentative", or "Decline" response at all.

Can somebody provide some advice on how to resolve this? I get invites from my work that I add to my Gmail calendar. Note that I have already tried adding the events to my iPhone native Calendar, but that exhibits the same behavior (expected since the handling of the incoming request is done by the Mail app).

Please advise.
 

dejanh

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Seriously, nobody? How can it be that people can use this device for work when they can't even properly manage Outlook meeting invites?
 

nappalonia

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I feel your pain...every time I send an outlook invitation to someone with an iPhone, they always call me to ask what it is and how to open the attachment, LOL?? Hopefully someone has an answer or knows of a workaround..
 

dejanh

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I feel your pain...every time I send an outlook invitation to someone with an iPhone, they always call me to ask what it is and how to open the attachment, LOL?? Hopefully someone has an answer or knows of a workaround..
Well, the thing is that the attachment opens (why attachment only Apple knows), but the only available option is "Add to Calendar". So, instead of the standard "Accept", "Decline", or "Tenantive" responses, you are pretty much left with two options "Accept without notifying the organizer" or "Decline without notifying the organizer". In all, no response ever goes to the organizer, so how exactly is the organizer supposed to know what your meeting acceptance status was and if you're even showing up?

It's such amateur handling of meeting invites. The Gmail mobile client does a better job, which is sad. It's maddeningly frustrating.
 

Petulinek

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I have no problem on default iOS email client. On Exchange account i have standard "Accept", "Decline", or "Tenantive" responses and it works very well.
 

dejanh

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I have no problem on default iOS email client. On Exchange account i have standard "Accept", "Decline", or "Tenantive" responses and it works very well.
I think that's different though than my question. I do not have an Exchange email account. Instead, I am getting invites from Exchange-based server sent using Outlook client to my Gmail account. Any invite sent this way does not offer the standard acceptance options or the ability to notify the organizer. I think Exchange-native is able to do it (I remember being able to do it in the past) because Exchange knows how to process the invite. I can't confirm this now since I (as stated) do not have Exchange hooked up to my phone any more.
 
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Petulinek

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You?re right, Gmail is IMAP account, and can not handle Exchange requests. It of course doesnt work on Hotmail, Gmail and all other IMAP or POP3 emails
 

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