Set Up a Rule to Forward Meeting Invitations from Outlook

For work, I use Gmail and Google Calendar to manage my email and meetings. Recently, I had to start using Outlook for another email account on top of my usual Gmail inbox. I began looking for a way to keep my calendar in sync with all the new meetings going to my Outlook inbox. Fortunately, I was able to take advantage of a rules feature in Outlook. Here are the steps I took to forward every meeting invitation from Outlook into Gmail automatically.

Step 1

There’s an ellipsis menu button in Outlook’s toolbar on the top right corner. This menu will drop down some options, including Rules, which you can hover over to select “Create Rule.”

An open context menu in Microsoft Outlook showing where the Create Rule button is.

Step 2

When the window for rule creation pops up, click on Advanced Options in the lower right.

A dialog for creating rules in Microsoft Outlook that highlights where the Advanced Options button is.

Step 3

For the condition of the rule, scroll down the list and select “which is a meeting invitation or update.” This will apply the rule to any incoming meeting invitations.A window of the Rules Wizard in Microsoft Outlook showing the condition "which is a meeting invitation or update" being selected.

Step 4

For the action of the rule, select “forward it to people or public group.” After selecting this action, click on the underlined “people or public group” in the rule description at the bottom. Then, it will allow you to enter an email address, such as the one for your other inbox.

An input window to add an email address in the Rules Wizard of Microsoft Outlook.

Step 5

Next, you’re prompted to select exceptions. To be safe, I selected an exception for messages that come from my Gmail inbox. This would avoid any potential forwarding of meetings that I invite my Outlook account to from my Gmail account. If you do this the way I did, you’ll have to click on “people or public group” in the exception to set it to the appropriate email address.

Window showing the step to select an exception for the rule being created in the Rules Wizard in Microsoft Outlook.

Step 6

Finally, your last step is to name the rule and enable it. You’re done!

A window showing the last step of the Rules Wizard in Microsoft Outlook where the rule is being named, and a preview is shown of the rule, which is described as forwarding meeting invitations to a certain email address, unless the invitation came from that email address.

Now any meetings that go to your Outlook inbox will automatically be forwarded to whichever other email you want.

 

Update for the new Outlook in 2024

Recently there has been an update/redesign to Microsoft Outlook which unfortunately has removed the “Advanced Options” from the Rules Wizard. This means you can no longer select a condition like “which is a meeting invitation or update”. You can still create rules, but they won’t be as specific as you could make in the previous version of Outlook. Here’s how I’ve tried to replicate my previous strategy.

To start, you can go into the Mail settings of Outlook, or you can right click an email in your inbox, go to “Rules”, and then “Create Rule”. From there, click on “More Options”.

The "Create a rule" modal from Microsoft Outlook, with a red box highlighting the "More options" button, which will open the more fleshed out Rules settings page.

Then, in the new rule wizard, you can add conditions like “Subject includes” and “Has attachment” to narrow down email to what would qualify as a meeting invitation. Then you can still add actions and exceptions like you would for the previous rule, to forward the email to whichever address you’d like, as well as exclude any email that might come from the address you’re trying to forward to.

The Rules setting page in Microsoft Outlook, with some conditions, actions, and exceptions set up.

It’s an imperfect solution, but until Microsoft adds back the condition to explicitly select email that represents a calendar invitation, it may be your best option.

Conversation
  • Adam says:

    Hey Patrick, great article! The walk through and screenshots were much appreicated.

    Something I am curious about, I tested this with meetings that I created, and it worked like a charm. When I am invited to a teams meeting (and I accept) I do not see it appear in my 2nd calendar and do not have an option to view it

    Is there a work around for this?

  • ecv08934 says:

    Not an option for OWA or Outlook Online, is this a limitation of the online client? unfortunately only one i can use.

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