How can I hide or ignore old Outlook iCal invitations?

Question

I often ignore invitations to office events on my phone, and then answer them later from iCal on my Macbook. Sometimes there are old invitations for events that have already occurred. However, the only options in iCal are Maybe, Decline or Accept.

If I choose any of these an email is sent to the requester which is confusing for them. How do I remove these from my queue without triggering an email? In other words, where is the Remove or Hide button?

Update 2013-01-08: The problem is that the invitations no longer appear on my phone (the "Invitations" list is empty) however they still appear in my Mac's iCal tray.

Answer 1

It appears that several similar forum threads have your question and have had no success in finding an option in iCal to Ignore or Remove an invitation without clicking one of the options you have listed, which sends an email. Here is a workaround that is worth a try if you don't want iCal to trigger an email:

Use iCal Reply Checker. I've tried it myself and it works great to prevent or change the emails iCal sends when responding to an invitation. It is shareware, however, so remove all of the old events you need within the ten days that the application is free.

Answer 2

For an Exchange account the only way I found to clear old invites out was to log into Outlook Web Access in my web browser and decline them without sending an email in there. Just go to the same dates specified in iCal for the invites and use the right click menu in the calendar tab to decline them.

Answer 3

actually for me it worked to delete the caches: http://kb.mit.edu/confluence/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=12386508

Answer 4

On the webpage for Ical Reply Checker it says: Note: iCal Reply Checker is not compatible with notifications sent by iCal using Exchange or CalDAV servers including the iCloud calendar.

Unfortunately I have this issue with an Exchange account (as probably most ppl will)...

Answer 5

All I did to get rid of the previous invitations on my iPad was to remove the exchange account from the iPad all together and then re-add the account again. This may not work for a few though because for some reason you may want to view to previous events on your iPad and it looks like it eats rid of all the previous events. However it worked for me how I wanted it to and there are no more invitations that I can't get rid of.

Answer 6

It's easy actually. Go to the day of the notification. Highlight it on your calendar. Then select "Delete without Notifying"

Answer 7

Disable the internet connection on your mac. Then click any of the invitation replies. Go to the Mail application and delete the message from the outbox. Restore internet connection.

Answer 8

Success! In the iCalendar menu, click View==>Show Declined Events. Once they appear, right-click on one and choose whether to Delete that instance or Delete All occurrences.