Tip of the week # 617
10 August 2020


Copy and summarise all meeting request responses (Microsoft Outlook) *

When you invite people to an Outlook meeting you can use the Tracking button to view the various responses. But did you know you can easily copy and paste the text elsewhere? This way you can quickly print a list of the meeting attendees - if necessary - or summarise how many people Accepted, Declined, clicked Tentative or didn't respond at all.

Here's how:

  1. Open the meeting request, as normal.
  2. On the Meeting tab, click on the Tracking button's drop-down arrow and select Copy Status to Clipboard. (In Microsoft 365 I have a separate Tracking tab.)

You can now paste the information in, say, Word. But why not take it a step further and summarize it in Excel, using a PivotTable?

  1. Open Excel and press CTRL + V.
  2. Press CTRL + T.
  3. Make sure the My table has headers box is ticked and press ENTER.
  4. Click on the Summarize with PivotTable button on the Table Tools Design tab.
  5. Press ENTER to put the summary on a New Worksheet or click on the Existing Worksheet radio button and click on a cell in the current sheet where you want the report to be placed.
  6. In the PivotTable Field List on the right hand side, click on Response, followed by Name and/or drag Name to the Values box.

Experiment with the layout and design and you'll see how easy it is!

Related tips

  1. Total the data in a table - tip_561.php
  2. Quickly format and enable filtering of your data - tip_429.php
  3. Filter data in a PivotTable and PivotChart using Slicers - tip_474.php

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* Unless stated otherwise, these tips were written for Microsoft Office 2010.