Invite People to Events
Want to make sure all the necessary folks show up to a meeting? Use Calendar to invite them to your event and keep an eye on who’s coming. This chapter looks at how to send an invitation, has tips on how to Get in Touch with Invitees, and covers how to Accept and Decline Invitations that others send you.
Send the Invitation
You can send an invitation either when you create an event or when you view an event’s Info pane later. Here’s how to add invitees:
Click the Add Invitees field in macOS or tap the Invitees field in iOS/iPadOS.
Type in a person’s name or email address. As you type, Calendar looks for matches in Contacts and Mail, and on connected calendar servers. If the contact information is already in your Contacts app, for instance, it can make a match just from the name.
Press Return or Tab in macOS to go accept or enter an invitee, move down a line, and add another. In iOS/iPadOS, you can type a comma to accept an entry you typed in.
When you finish entering invitees, click the Send button in the bottom-right corner of the popover in macOS, or tap Done, then Edit Event, then Done in iOS/iPadOS.
Invitees receive an email with details about the event and can click to accept, decline, or waffle with a maybe.
Check an Invitation’s Status
Calendar lets you check the status of your invitations in a number of ways after invitations are sent:
By invitee: Symbols appear next to invitee names in the Info pane.
Here’s a rundown of what a symbol tells you about an invitee:
Hasn’t responded, but is available at that time
Hasn’t responded, but is busy at that time
Hasn’t responded, and this calendar doesn’t track availability (or you’re still editing an invitation and it hasn’t yet been sent)
Has accepted your invitation
Has responded “Maybe”
Has turned your invitation down
Not listed on this calendar server
With notifications: In the Calendars list, if a calendar has any notifications, the number of notifications appears next to the calendar name. Likewise, the Notifications
icon at the top of the sidebar shows how many new notifications you have. (The icon doesn’t show at all if you have no new notifications.) Click it for a rundown (see Figure 36).
Figure 36: Click the Notifications icon at the top of the sidebar to see new Calendar notifications, including invitations. Click Decline, Maybe, or Accept to reply to an invitation here. With a symbol on the event: In Week or Day view, a symbol on the event summarizes the status of its invitations (Figure 37).
Figure 37: A symbol at the corner of the event gives a quick idea of your invitations’ statuses. Ideally, you want to see a person with a check, which means all invitees accepted your invitation. If responses are mixed, you’ll see a person with a question mark; if everyone turned you down (sorry about that), you’ll see a person with an X. Apple changed these icons starting in macOS 11 Big Sur. Here’s what you’ll see:
In macOS 10.15 Catalina and earlier:
, 
, and 
.In macOS 11 Big Sur and later:
, 
, and 
.
Get in Touch with Invitees
Sometimes, it takes a little more effort to get the ball rolling.
Resend Invitations
If you need to resend an invitation later because you’ve noticed some invitees haven’t responded at all:
Open the event.
Hover over the invitee and click the arrow that appears to show their pop-up menu.
Choose Invite Again.
Write to the Group
You might find yourself needing to send a message to your group, say if the conference room changes, you want them each to come prepared with a pitch, or you need to know what kind of pizza they eat.
In that case, Control-click or right-click the event in Calendar and choose Email All Participants or Message All Participants. When you do, a Messages or Mail window opens—already addressed—where you can type in your note. Click Send, and it’s on its way.
Accept and Decline Invitations
If you’re invited to an event, accepting or declining is a fairly simple matter:
Click or tap the Notifications
icon at the top of the sidebar in macOS or iPadOS and then click New; in iOS/iPadOS, tap the Inbox link at the bottom-right corner of the screen. The invitation should be listed. Click or tap Accept, Decline, or Maybe.If a Calendar notification for an event invitation appears in the top-right corner of your macOS screen, click Close, Accept, or View, depending on the available options. (For more about notifications, see Set Up Notifications.)
If you receive an invitation via email, click the Accept, Decline, or Maybe button in the message.
Change Your Reply
If circumstances change later and you want to change your reply, Control-click or right-click the event in your calendar and choose Accept, Maybe, or Decline.
Ask for a Different Time
What if the proposed time doesn’t work? You could email or message the organizer, of course, or you can let Calendar help you do it.
In Week or Month view, drag the event to a new day. Or, in Day or Week view, drag the event to a new time. The original event becomes striped and a new event appears marked “proposed” in all caps. A dialog asks if you’d like to ask the organizer to move the event. If you do, click Propose (Figure 38).
How your proposed time change gets to the organizer depends on the type of calendar service:
iCloud: Follow the prompts to send the organizer an email message.
Recent versions of Exchange Server and some CalDAV servers: The organizer can click the Notifications
icon at the top of the sidebar, click New, and then see your proposal in the list. They might also see a Calendar notification.Some Exchange and CalDAV servers: Email is sent automatically to the organizer.