You are a regular Outlook user and use it to communicate, schedule appointments etc. But all of a sudden, when you try to share calendars with other users in the organization, an error is encountered. ‘Error while preparing to send sharing message’
If this happens, what will you do in such situations? Read this guide to learn more about the troubleshooting steps to resolve the error.
Solution 1: Add permissions to the recipient of the calendar
It could be that users you are trying to share the calendar with may not have appropriate permissions. Or maybe you are trying to share the calendar with users who have left the organization or who have invalid accounts. Whatever may be the case, there are chances you may encounter this error message if there are permission/account issues. To resolve the issue, follow the steps below.
- In Outlook, go to Calendar
- Right click on the calendar you wish to email
- Go to Permissions tab and go to the user’s list. Add recipients if required; remove unintended recipients and also remove duplicates if there are any
- Click Apply and close the window
Now try sharing your calendar again and check if the error persists. Ideally, if it’s a permissions issue, this step should resolve the error and you should be able to share the calendar.
Solution 2: Use Outlook on the web (Formerly known as OWA)
You may receive this error if you use Microsoft Outlook 2007 and connect to Exchange Server 2013 or Exchange Online mailbox. This is because of a limitation in how these servers set permissions.
A workaround for the problem is to use Outlook on the web to share calendars. Follow the steps to do so,
- Click on App launcher on the top and select Calendar
- Click Share and then choose a calendar to share
- In ‘Send a sharing invitation in email’ section, type the recipient’s email
- Then select what information you want the recipient to see
- Finally, select Share
After following these steps, you should be able to resolve the issue and share your calendars.
On a side note, if your Outlook is not behaving normally and there are some inherent issues, it could be your Outlook data file (PST). Corruption in these files causes problems and your Outlook will not respond when sending email. To fix Outlook, these files need repair.
Of course, there is a built-in tool called Scanpst (also called Inbox repair tool) to repair your files. It is good for repairing minor corruption issues. However, if the PST file is large, the troubleshooter may not respond. Refer Microsoft outlook inbox repair tool not responding for more details.
For a more advanced and dedicated repair software, you can use Remo Repair Outlook. It is one of the best PST repair tools. It takes data from your file, fixes corruption and generates healthy files. This is not just limited to emails, but all your Outlook contents such as contacts, calendars, notes etc. can be recovered.
It works on all versions of Outlook including Outlook 2016.