Ical meeting requests and outlook

Hi Sean,

I have the same problem. It doesn't seem that anyone at Mac cares about this issue. I believe it is an important issue since there must be iCal users that are sending invitations to Outlook users in an Exchange environment.

I saw this thread, but couldn't get it to work: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1532173&tstart=30

I have also called the support line at Mac about this and they seemed to believe it was a "licensing" issue -- I can't believe this. It should be an easy fix for Mac -- but one they don't care about. Considering they are trying to attract PC users, this is not a good.

Have you had any luck? I'd be interested in hearing.

regards, Alec

Interesting - I need to be able to send iCal invites to Outlook users via email. This problem may actually drive me to using Entourage - something I do not want to do. I can process invites I receive from Outlook and Lotus Notes (although the times are often wrong).

If I go to Entourage, will I be able to sync with my iPhone and MobileMe?

Thanks,
GdH

I have the same problem. Sent a meeting invite to a group, many of them Outlook users and they don't get the link to accept the invite.
This is ridiculous. I have a brand spanking new MacBook Pro running Leopard and the latest version of Mail and I can't send meeting invites that work!!??
If anyone has an answer to this problem, I'm all ears.
Also, what's with this nonsense of not being able to select the sending e-mail reply address for a meeting invite.
We can do this in e-mail, but not in iCal.
These features have been available in Entourage and a zillion other e-mail and calendaring software packages FOREVER. Who would even think you'd need to look for them ahead of a buying decision.

I am encountering exactly the same problem. iCal Appointments created on my Mac and sent to Outlook users are unusable by them. They have no accept/reject functionality on these appointment requests.

I came across the following link on Macoshints ( http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20031128231213827). Looks a little dicey, and for an earlier version (10.3), but it would seem to fix the problem. Anyone with experience in this area willing to vouch for this technique? Thanks.

I know John Maisey has worked on (and distributes a solution for) the reverse problem - maybe his fix is bi-directional. If not it would be worth emailing him to see has he any suggestions.

AK

Just a note that I am having this same issue. It makes iCal worthless in a "normal" work environment if you can't send Outlook users meeting invites.

I have the reverse problem - or rather, I don't often send meeting requests out to PC users, but often get them sent to me. Except these days I can't get them to show up in my mail. They just come in blank. The info is there in the raw header, but it's nothing ical can pull out.

I've also tried YAI, ( http://www.nhoj.co.uk/youreinvited) but it's not working either. I do have a note into the author, perhaps he can help.

There are several discussions regarding this same topic on the Apple forums and elsewhere. None of them have solved the problem. This seems to be an issue that has been around for a long time but never addressed by Apple or Microsoft. From some simple tests that I have done, it appears the the Microsoft Exchange Server is not interpreting the iCal event (.ics extension) properly. I have seen discussions saying that Apple is not formatting the event properly or is using a newer standard that MS Exchange does not support. I believe it is the later as I can make the event work properly without any software changes but I have to do some steps manually. Here is how I can make it work and why I believe something is wrong in MS Exchange:

- create event in iCal and add an Outlook user
- send the event/email (ignore this email on the PC as it does not work)
- open the just sent email and save the attached iCal event
- find the saved iCal event and add a letter to the extension such as ".icss"
- (Note: I don't know if there is a way to rename an attachment already in a message)
- attach this renamed event to a new message and send it to the Outlook user
- the Outlook user must open the message, save the attachment and rename it back to ".ics"
- double clicking / opening this renamed file now works perfectly in Outlook

Now, if I could only automate some of these steps on the Mac before I send the message would be very helpful. This is not a great solution but I use it for events that I want to sync between my home Mac and my office PC.

Because the renamed attachment (.icss) works through Exchange (by ignoring it), I am lead to believe that MS Exchange will interpret an ".ics" extension and mess up the handling of it for some reason. Microsoft is never one to follow standards very carefully or adopt them very quickly. Our company is using Exchange 2003 so maybe that is part of the problem as it is an older version.

U ROCK!!

That totally works!! Thanks a bunch... and if THEY could only fix it.

Cheers,