Tip 1051: Send meeting details in an email

After several questions over the last couple of weeks asking how to send a plain text meeting request, I thought it was time to write up a tip on the subject.

Why would you want to do this? Most users want to forward a copy of their appointments to a cell phone or their personal address but only need the details in a text message format, not a meeting request or appointment.

How can I convert a meeting request to plain email, so the text from the meeting request goes into the email body?

This is easy to do, however, it's not going to be a meeting request; it's just going to be a plain message with the calendar details in the message body.

Create an appointment on your calendar then drag it to the Mail button or folder on the navigation pane to put the meeting details into the message body:

Note: The Contacts: entry is a contact I added to the Contacts field of the appointment, not the attendees field. You can drag a meeting request already on your calendar and it will include the attendees and organizer.

If you want to send appointment or meeting details to another address automatically you can use a VBA macro. In the code sample at Forward meeting details to another address, the message is generated when a meeting request arrives. A new message is generated with the meeting details and sent to the address in the macro.

To send a text message for every appointment or meeting added to your calendar, you'd use an ItemAdd macro. I have sample macro that does this, also on the page linked above.

Published December 27, 2012. Last updated on May 8, 2014.