Outlook meeting defaulting to free time

Question

In outlook there are two ways to set the time for a meeting.

1. in the "Appointment" screen
2. in the Scheduling Assistant screen

If I set my meeting up for a couple of hours (in other words, not all day) in the Appointment screen (1), Outlook defaults the meeting to Busy time -- as it should.

If I set the same meeting time up using the Scheduling Assistant (2), it defaults to Free time!

This started when we upgraded from Outlook 2007 to Outlook 2010.

Answer 1

The purpose of the Scheduling Assistant is to help you see when other people have free time, when scheduling a meeting. So it is going to display as free time until you actually send it. At that point, it should provisionally block the time on everyone's calendar. When the meeting is accepted by any user, the time will be blocked off so that it will show as busy if someone else tries to schedule the same time.