I already considered that option, but it has it's problems too:
1. It needs to be clear to Meeting organizer that I am not coming,
unfortunately with our company culture this is the case.
2. If I mark as tentative, it blocks that time off in my calendar and will
bypass that time block when the autoscheduler is used. With the considerable
amount of meetings in our company, the autoscheduler is the only way to
schedule a meeting.

However, our local IT group made the recommendation to run the command line
switches for /cleanfreebusy and /cleanreminders and that work for the meeting
I had to decline today, so this may have solved the problem. We shall see...

"Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]" wrote:

Then mark the item as tentative rather than decline.

--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. All
unsolicited mail sent to my personal account will be deleted without
reading.

After furious head scratching, JWSSoft asked:

| I also agree! My issue is that the meeting invites that I sometimes
| have to decline due to being double or triple booked contain agenda's
| and minutes that I need to refer to long term. When I try to recover
| them from my Deleted Items folder it converts them into a regular
| email format with no recipient and saves as a draft email from me!!!
| This makes it really hard to search on it later when I need to refer
| to it!!
|
| "TRAFFICBLOWS" wrote:
|
|| I agree wholeheartedly!! I want to see a "Show Meeting as Free in
|| Calendar" option when Declining an appointment so the meeting can be
|| revisited at a later date.
||
|| Often when there are conflicting meetings, one gets cancelled or you
|| change your mind, but the Calendar only shows the accepted meeting.
|| Definitely want to keep track of declined appointments, at least to
|| see when they occured or to keep up with updates.
||
|| "LostButFound" wrote:
||
||| Thanks, Milly - it's unfortunate that Outlook doesn't keep a record
||| of declined meeting invitations. It's not unusual that situations
||| change so that I find I can attend a meeting after I've declined it.
|||
||| "Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]" wrote:
|||
|||| Ask the meeting organizer to resend it.
||||
|||| --
|||| Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]
||||
|||| Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact. Due
|||| to the (insert latest virus name here) virus, all mail sent to my
|||| personal account will be deleted without reading.
||||
||||
|||| After furious head-scratching, LostButFound asked this group:
||||
||||| how can I accept a meeting invitation I previously declined?