One of the best-kept secrets in Outlook is the hotkey that allows you to quickly and easily duplicate meetings and appointments on your Outlook calendar.
One particular use case is if you have a meeting and need to quickly schedule a follow-up meeting. This meeting may have all the same participants and agenda. If the meeting was not previously set up as a recurring meeting, only needs a single follow-up and, you want to maintain the original meeting on the calendar, then copying the meeting is the best way to go.
To copy a meeting, select the meeting, hold the CTRL button on your keyboard and drag the meeting to a new spot. Once in the new spot, release both your mouse button and the CTRL-key.
A duplicate meeting appears in that new spot and the existing meeting is preserved for historical purposes. The new meeting will contain all the same attendees and content from the old meeting.
You will then need to open the new meeting and click the Send button so all attendees get the new meeting invite.
If you want to duplicate appointments the process is identical.
You are all set!
So, what do you think about this option to quickly duplicate meetings and appointments in Outlook? Drop a comment below or join the conversation on Twitter @SuperTekBoy.
OMG! How am I just learning this now. Thank you!
Amazing! Thank you for making work from home a bit easier during pandemic! Every little time saver helps!
This is hard to accomplish if you’re copying from one month to another. I’ve tried on PC using Office 365 and have problems scrolling to the new date.
Hi Robbin,
I recommend SHIFT-dragging the appointment onto a date on the calendar month in the top-left of your screen (left navigation pane). You can also drag the bar down to show multiple months in the left navigation pane.
Alt method works on mac: drag the appointment with holding the right button of mouse, release the mouse until to the specified day you will copy to, and then select the Copy from the popping out context menu.
Thank you–this worked perfectly! The only issue was I was in Weekly view and it would not drag to another week, but I dragged it to another day so that it duplicated it for me, then changed the Date. Presto–it was there! Why are so many things in MS so obscure? Appreciate you being there for us to learn from.
This does not work unfortunately. How hard can it be to add a duplicate button?
Agreed, shouldn’t be that hard, Google has them beat there.
Its a pain to drag when you’re trying to duplicate an appt in a different year.
Wonderful, thanks!!
Thanks that was helpful
Thanks. what a time saver
Thank you, thank you, daalu!!!!
Super-saver :))
In what universe does this work? I’m on a PC, using Outlook in Office 365 and NOTHING I do duplicates the calendar event easily. So frustrating.
O365 is SO different – this only works in CLIENT version (for me, anyway).
I was like there must be a way, thank you!! What a time saver 🙂
When I try this with meeting I organized in Teams, It has the organizer as software and I cannot change the new meeting or send it out.
Awesome tip!!!! Thank you!!!
It doesn’t work on the Outlook for Mac 16.33 (Exchange Server). I have tried every suggestion: Keyboard Copy and Paste; Option Drag; Command Option Drag; Command Drag. WTF?! How is something so basic like Copy and Paste not available in the Mac Version?!
Making a recurrence keeps the same meeting body copy every week. Moving meeting removes it from old location, which I don’t want. For billing I need to keep track of meetings. I want to copy existing weekly meeting and paste to new location so I can update the agenda every week. Instead I have to make a new meeting to 18 people every week. Grrrr.
Hi Amy,
Sorry to hear it does not work on the Mac. I would recommend checking out User Voice and posting a request here. Microsoft really does read these requests and top voted requests often end up getting developed and delivered (a recent example is saving your email signature and settings to your Office 365 mailbox so they can roam across devices) – https://outlook.uservoice.com/forums/293343-outlook-for-mac
Is there a way to do the same on Mac version 16? Tried both ctrl and command but no luck.
Hi, on Mac use the “Option” key.
No key works on the Mac. Any other options for this incredibly simple need? Neither copy, paste, or drag with any key combo results in a duplicated meeting.
Thanks Andres. Holding down the “Option” key and dragging using the left mouse button works for me on Mac.
Quite often i need to create a few instances of the same meeting requests in Microsoft Outlook. Are you aware of a simple way to duplicate a occurrence of an Outlook appointment by using copy and paste, as creating a meeting series for scheduling a few meetings might be somewhat of an overkill. Help is highly appreciated!
I have been trying to contact you, having problems install Exchange 2010 sp3
Hey Gary,
I have replied to your original comment – https://supertekboy.com/2014/05/01/exchange-2010-installing-service-pack-3/