How to receive meeting invitations from Office365, so that they can be parsed and added to a calendar?

The link that SEoF provided was a great suggestion. The blog post is incomplete, in my opinion, but it did get me started on the right track. I did some more digging and came up with a complete list of steps for getting Office 365 to send me meeting invites in iCalendar (.ics) format.

Note that I'm not an administrator and I didn't need to contact anyone to give me any privileges. The only caveat is that you need access to a Windows box. Once you change the settings via Windows, you can go back to using whatever OS you were using before. I did the following on my own as a normal user using Windows 7:

  1. Download and install Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 from http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30653.
  2. Download and install Windows Management Framework 4.0 (Windows6.1-KB2819745-x64-MultiPkg.msu) from http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=40855.
  3. Run PowerShell as an administrator.
  4. Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned
  5. $UserCredential = Get-Credential
  6. $Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://outlook.office365.com/powershell-liveid/ -Credential $UserCredential -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection
  7. $ImportResults = Import-PSSession $Session
  8. Get-CASMailbox -identity [email protected] | Format-List
  9. Set-CASMailbox -identity [email protected] -PopUseProtocolDefaults:$FALSE -ImapUseProtocolDefaults:$FALSE -PopForceICalForCalendarRetrievalOption:$TRUE -ImapForceICalForCalendarRetrievalOption:$TRUE
  10. Remove-PSSession $Session
  11. Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy Restricted

Now, my mutt on Linux is retrieving meeting invitations in iCalendar (.ics) format.


You can set it so Office 365/Outlook sends invitations formatted in iCalendar format via the web interface.

  1. Login to your Office 365 account
  2. Open Mail App (Outlook)
  3. Hit the gear icon in upper right corner (settings)
  4. In the search box type "imap"
  5. Select "Pop and IMAP"
  6. At bottom select "Send event invitations in iCalendar format" for POP and/or IMAP.
  7. Hit "Save"

You should now get all invitations in the iCalendar format.

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Mutt