It’s basic virtual workplace etiquette to schedule meetings beforehand. It gives the meeting attendees an intimation, and they can keep their schedules open for the meeting. But as important as scheduling a meeting is, it’s just as important to let them know if a meeting is canceled.

Microsoft Teams makes it uncannily easy to cancel meetings you have scheduled in the app. You can only cancel a meeting if you’re the meeting organizer. If you were invited to attend a meeting, you can only delete it from your calendar and not cancel it.

Now, there are two types of scheduled meetings: standalone meetings and recurring meetings. Let’s see how to cancel each type of meeting in Microsoft Teams.

Note: If a scheduled meeting does not have any attendees, there won’t be any option to cancel the meeting. But as there are no attendees, you don’t really need to notify anyone of the cancelation. So, it wouldn’t make any sense to cancel the meeting.

Canceling a Standalone Meeting

Open Microsoft Teams and go to the ‘Calendar’ tab from the navigation menu on the left.

Then, go to the meeting you want to cancel and click it.

A short options menu will pop up. Click the ‘Edit’ button.

The meeting details screen will open. Click the ‘Cancel Meeting’ button towards the top left corner.

A confirmation prompt will appear. You can add a cancelation note for the meeting attendees, but it’s completely optional. Click the ‘Cancel Meeting’ button.

This will delete the meeting from your calendar, and Microsoft Teams will also notify the meeting attendees of this development.

Note: Canceling a meeting from Microsoft Teams only works for Microsoft 365 users. For Microsoft Teams free users, you’d have to manually inform the people you sent the meeting link to of the cancelation. Also, delete the event so no one can join the meeting in case they don’t get the memo. Go to the Meetings tab. Then, click the ‘More options’ button (three-dot menu) and select ‘Delete’ from the options.

Canceling a Recurring Meeting

You could also have scheduled meetings that are a timely recurrence. When it comes to canceling these meetings, there are two things to consider: Whether you want to cancel a single meeting occurrence or the complete series.

Cancel a Single Meeting Occurrence

If you want to cancel a single occurrence, go to the Calendar tab and click that occurrence of the meeting that you want to cancel.

Then, click the ‘Edit’ button. A drop-down menu will expand. Select ‘Edit occurrence’ from the options.

Meeting details will open. Then, click the ‘Cancel Meeting’ button towards the top left corner.

Again, a few options will expand. Click ‘Cancel occurrence’ from the options. If you change your mind at this stage, you could also cancel the whole series by clicking the ‘Cancel series’ option.

A confirmation prompt will appear. Add a cancelation note if you want to. Then, click the ‘Cancel occurrence’ button to cancel only this single meeting occurrence and Microsoft Teams will notify the involved attendees.

Canceling the Whole Meeting Series

If you want to instead cancel the whole meeting series, go to the Calendar tab and click any meeting from the series on the calendar.

Click the ‘Edit’ button and select ‘Edit Series’ from the drop-down options.

The meeting details will open. Click the ‘Cancel Meeting’ option. When editing the series, there won’t be an option asking whether you want to cancel the occurrence or series. It’ll cancel the series in a single click.

A confirmation prompt will appear. Add a cancelation note for the meeting attendees if you want to add a personalized message about the cancelation. Then, click the ‘Cancel series’ button.

The whole meeting series will be canceled, and meeting attendees will be notified of this update.

Canceling a meeting so you don’t waste other attendees’ time is just as crucial as scheduling meetings. Fortunately, Microsoft Teams makes it really easy to cancel any type of meeting and also notifies the attendees in the process.