How can I decline a meeting invitation but still leave it on calendar in Outlook?

Answer 1

Here's how you do this in Outlook 2010:

1. Decline the meeting so the person knows you aren't attending
2. Go to the deleted items folder and open the invite
3. Click "Tentative" and then "Do not send a response"
4. Open the appointment and then change your time to "Free"

These steps only work when you just received the meeting invite. It will be difficult to find the meeting invite for declining one occurrence of a weekly meeting that has been running for a while.