After attending some really great leadership training from Kimball Fisher (author of Leading Self-Drected Work Teams and other great books) at work this week, I decided I must do better with setting the goals and agenda for meetings in hopes that attendees come more prepared and the meetings are more effective. I have thought to do this in the past but never remember it when I’m in the throes of creating a meeting.
So this time I decided to change my default meeting template in Outlook so I won’t forget going forward. Surely this is easy right? Wrong! Microsoft makes this far too difficult in my opinion. Regardless I figured it out and thought I would share it here to benefit others.
Forms are the mechanism by which Outlook allows you to edit the default meeting template. I had thought I would be able to create a meeting specific signature but this doesn’t appear to be an option. I use Outlook 2016 but I believe these steps will work as far back as Outlook 2010.
Step 1 – Enabled developer mode
This is ridiculous but you have to use Developer mode to alter forms in Outlook. Go to File | Options | Customize Ribbon, enable the Developer Tab and click OK.
Step 2 – Create a custom form
Open a new meeting request then go to Developer Tab and choose Design this Form:
Next customize the form to your liking. In this case, I simply set the default meeting body:
Once complete, click the Publish button, name your Form and save it in the Outlook Folders location:
Step 3 – Set the default meeting request form
Open the calendar view in Outlook, right click the calendar you wish to set the default form for and choose Properties:
Lastly set the “When posting to this folder, use:” field to your new form and click OK:
Going forward any new meeting request you create will use this new template:
Please let me know if this post was helpful to you in either the comments below or on social media (Twitter, Reddit, etc).
Happy meeting facilitation!
How would you save and set that form as the default for all users (exchange 2016)?
Sorry not an Exchange admin so not sure but definitely a cool idea! If you find a solution please share it here.
I followed these instructions as-is on a shared calendar. “template” i defined works for me. Asked others with access to that calendar to do test runs. WORKS! Thank you!
My pleasure!
Hi, this doesn’t work when I have someone else’s calendar open and I click “New meeting with all” – which is how I scchedule meetings. The template is only applied with I have only my calendar open and click “new meeting” or “new appointment.”
Do you know how to fix that?
Sorry, no I do not know how to fix that. If you figure it out, please report back how.
Sorry, no I’m not sure how to fix that. If you figure it out, please report it back here.
Thank you very useful
Thanks for the feedback!
Thanks, really helpful. I also added my signature, like I have for emails (rather than having to click insert signature each time.
Great idea!
Perfect. Helped me a lot! Thank you.
Thanks! Step 3 was what I needed!
Glad to help!
It worked fine, thank you!!
And, BTW, in your intro paragraph, it is “throes” not “throws” in this context.
Thanks!
Thanks Jo!
Super helpful and accurate!
My IT support didn’t even know this! You are AMAZING! However, I need to know how I can go to the “template/form” I created and update or modify it, please.
Great to hear it was helpful! You can edit existing forms using the “Choose a Form” button instead of the “Design a Form” button.
It lets me open it that way, but it doesn’t save it.
Kim G: Once you have it open, make the desired changes, then click on the developer tab again, and “publish” again. Publish Form will overwrite the former one.
Thanks for the tip Jack!
All very cool – thanks rschiefer and everyone!
I was able to easily follow the steps and create a new meeting invite default form which I customized and including my signature etc.
One challenge: On my meeting invites, I have two ‘from’ options and I want to switch it from the default e-mail to the my other option. I can do this manually every time but that is a hassle and I want to automate that. I tried to do this in my new custom meeting invite form but that e-mail’ from’ part is not saving along with the rest of the meeting invite – it just keeps going back to the default ‘from’ e-mail address.
Can anyone assist??
🙂
I’m not aware of a way to do this but please do share if you find it.
I wonder if you could create a Quick Step to generate the meeting and have it still use the new default form…
Not sure. I don’t have bandwidth right now to do that but if you get it working please share the steps here in the comments. Thanks!
Hi,
I could create a default template to add my signature but i couldn’t modify the ” Join Skype Meeting” that i have by default to have this ” Click here to join Skype Meeting”!!
Do you have any idea to do that ?
Thank you
I don’t believe its possible to customize that.
Good stuff, thanks!
Brilliant – Thanks so much. Now just to get the other 1200 employees using the same thing!!
Glad you found it useful!
How your deploy this for all outlook users?
Please save me
Not sure but I would assume this is possible. If you figure it out please share it here.
Thanks – I searched for hours for a solution and this worked for me.
The problem I had was that I had 2 older meeting templates (created several years ago), and after creating a new template/custom form couldn’t figure out how to set it as the new default. , but darn Darn, it is SO unintuitive…
Great to hear it worked for you. Thanks for sharing!
Your instructions worked perfectly for O2016 … I wished I’d thought to look up this topic years ago!
Great, thanks for sharing your experience!
Just what I was looking for, thanks for saving me some time and effort!! Ditto the comment about looking this up years ago…sometimes we just have to reach that pain threshold before we fix it!!
Glad to help!
Worked great, windows 10 + office 2016, thanks!
Thank you for the steps to change the calendar default template.
My pleasure, glad it helped you!
Thank you! This was helpful. Quick question – The standard Outlook appointment form shows From, To, Location, Subject, Start Time, End Time. Is there a way to add the field “Billing Information” as one of those options? I followed the instructions you provided and I have “Billing Information” as “P.2” in the “Show” group. But ideally “billing information” would be a field directly below the “Location” option in the template. I haven’t been able to figure this would. Would be grateful for any guidance. Many thank.s
Glad the post was helpful! I’m not aware of a way to add custom fields but that doesn’t mean its not possible. If you figure it out please share how here.
Thank you so much for putting this together. My personal issue is that if I have it as a teams meeting or skype meeting, that info always ends up after the signature block. Is there a way to have the meeting info above the signature block?
Not that I know of but if you find a solution please post it here to share with others.
Works great, thanks!
I hated adding manually all the locations (rooms) we have so I can choose one available within the scheduling assistant, now I just added all of them into the template. Simple and elegant. Thanks again.
It worked – now time to roll it out to my PMs!
Glad it was helpful!
Thank you for the clear steps. Works great!
Thank you , this was helpful
Excellent walkthrough. I shamelessly reposted the content on our company wiki for best practices, and attributed you as the author. Thank you!
Glad it was helpful and you are sharing it.
thank you
Thank you, this was very helpful.
Your welcome!
This is great thank you!
Four and a half years later, this is still a useful post! Nicely done, thank you. I used it to add my default signature to my meeting requests. Now if I could just add it to meeting responses. *Sigh*