Exchange calendar in Calendar App – Sequoia bug

[fronesis]

RESOLVED: the problem occurs when your exchange account has multiple email aliases, or the default email address is different from the MS exchange log-in address. The solution is to make your exchange default email address the same as the login address.

Is anyone successfully doing the following: using the built-in Mac Calendar app to access an Exchange calendar, and having calendar invites work properly?

For me, and for a bunch of other people here, every invite sent through the Exchange calendar shows up on the Mac calendar as *read-only*. You can't accept or decline the invite properly, and you cannot delete the event.

I have the same exchange calendar working fine on calendar app on two other Macs running MacOS 14.x, but it does not work on Sequoia. I've tried everything to fix, but it seems like a bug. I'm a bit shocked that this kind of basic functionality would be broken in November.

 

[fronesis]

Still looking for anyone running Sequoia and the built-in Mac Calendar app who has it working properly with an Exchange calendar???

As far as I can tell, invitation events just don’t work on Sequoia; they come up read-only, and it’s possible to change your status (go from accepted to declined) or make the event go away. Just seems like a major bug for an OS that’s been in beta since the summer.

 

[Phrogz]

RESOLVED: the problem occurs when your exchange account has multiple email aliases, or the default email address is different from the MS exchange log-in address. The solution is to make your exchange default email address the same as the login address.

I'm super glad you've found a solution. Can you please clarify what you did, exactly, to fix it? Where did you change the "exchange default email address", and what did you change it to?

All macOS users at my Exchange-based company are seeing this same issue, and I'd love to be able to resolve this without waiting for Apple to fix.

(Also, how certain are you that this is a Sequoia-specific bug?)

 

[fronesis]

The problem is that the Mac Calendar app does not recognize the invite email address as belonging to Exchange account holder. So it treats those invited events as read-only. You cannot fix this by editing your Apple “me” contact card. You have to make the change on the Exchange server.

In my case – and as far as I can tell from extensive reading, in many others – the issue appeared because my default University email address (where all my invites were sent) was not the same as my University-Microsoft account email address. That is to say, my default email address in the system was ME@xx.edu, but my Microsoft account (tied to the university) login userID was MYNAME@xxx.edu.

If I try to log into my exchange account using my default university email address, the exchange authentication server rejects that ID with the error “email address not recognized.” I can ONLY log into to exchange with the one email that my University exchange account recognizes.

The solution for me:
I changed my “default email address” in a proprietary profile page that my university sets up. This changed my Exchange contact information to the same email address as I log into the exchange servers. (Note that my exchange admin prohibits users from editing their own contact card, so the only way to make this change for me was through the separate profile page.)

After that change propagated to the servers, turning OFF and back ON the exchange calendar loaded all events properly.

In your case, @Phrogz , the first thing to check would be this: do those users having the problem have default email addresses that are DIFFERENT from their Microsoft login userID? If so, you need to change that default email address to the Microsoft loginID. Note that this DOESe have a drawback, which I have experienced: you can no longer use your default email address.

Finally, I think there are more fundamental issues, but this IS a Sequoia bug. Prior to Sequoia MacOS didn’t create problems here: it would just allow a user read/write access to calendar events, regardless of a difference between login id and default email. I note that Sequoia has a much-updated Calendar app (to integrate reminders into the calendar).

It seems plausible that apple could fix this as the problem does not appear on iPadOS or iOS calendars.

 

[patthedog]

For me it seems the issue is related to event invitations sent to distribution lists. Toggling the exchange account on and off clears out those read-only events, but new ones will appear when I receive new invitations.

The workaround that works for me is the following post on the Apple forum:

I found a workaround to survive. If you set yourself as a delegate in exchange account properties, another copy of your calendar appears. This time without the "imported" events, all working fine so far. All you need then is to stop showing the original calendar.