Managing calendar items from employees who have left the company can be a real headache, especially in large organizations. We frequently receive requests from users about meetings that are no longer active, particularly those organized by employees who were terminated months ago. Although we can use PowerShell cmdlets to remove these events from all mailboxes, it feels like a cumbersome solution. Typically, we advise users to have each participant delete the meeting and recreate it. I'm curious if anyone has found a more efficient method for handling this situation? I've been in IT for 25 years, and this issue seems to persist.
5 Answers
We use Adaxes for our offboarding workflow, which includes an automatic cancellation of all meetings scheduled by terminated users. Before we remove the user's account, we run a PowerShell command like:
```PowerShell
Remove-CalendarEvents -Identity [email protected] -CancelOrganizedMeetings -QueryWindowInDays 1825
```
This way, it sends out cancellation notices properly and avoids future confusion.
Honestly, just tell folks to deal with it, or maybe add a step in the offboarding process to clear the calendar. You could delegate access to a manager for cleanup, too. But the bigger issue is making sure we don’t leave meetings hanging that people still want.
The best approach is to handle this during the offboarding. Before deleting the mailbox, convert it to a shared mailbox and run commands to cancel future meetings. Run something like:
```PowerShell
Remove-CalendarEvents -Identity [[email protected]] -CancelOrganizedMeetings -QueryStartDate (Get-Date)
```
This way, you send proper cancellation notices. If the mailbox has already been deleted, restoring it to cancel meetings is an option, but tightening the offboarding process can really help eliminate these issues.
At the end of the day, you just have to accept that Outlook has its quirks. It's either spend a bunch of time on PowerShell for something that takes users seconds to delete themselves, or just let it go.
I think rescheduling recurring meetings is really a management issue, not something IT should have to worry about. It's best left for their manager to handle.
Just a note – you don't necessarily need to convert it to a shared mailbox before using that PowerShell command. The query start date defaults to today's date, so it's not needed either.