Roger,

I had an opportunity to test some of these things out.

Sure enough, it was in fact a situation where it was recognizing my email from the GAL, and assuming that I was wanting to start a meeting rather than saving the event as an appointment. As soon as my co-worker was assigned as a creator it opened as an appointment that I could save to my calendar. Thank you for having me check on that, and I apologize that I didn't try that first.

Also, I did a little more looking at the email .ics situation. It appears to be an issue that is specific to Outlook 2007. I tested it out a few ways:

Note: All gmail tests were done using the gmail web client via Firefox.

Test 1: Sent to gmail rather than to my exchange account. Gmail properly recognized that it was a calendar event and offered to let me add it to my google calendar. Additionally downloading the file from the email via gmail opened correctly and could be saved to my Outlook calendar successfully.

Test 2. I was curious at that point about whether it was Exchange related or Outlook specific. I went to our webmail and opened the message. Sure enough, the .ICS file was present. I could download the .ics file and add it successfully.

Test 3. I forwarded the message from Outlook 2007 to my gmail. Gmail successfully recognized that as a .ics file, but the download saves/opens as a text file. If you attempt to save the file to your computer it will properly save as a .ics but will not open.

Test 4. I forwarded a successful and working message from gmail to Outlook. Outlook 2007 showed the email as a 1kb attachment. On the other hand, Outlook Web Mail opened the forwarded message correctly.

Definitely seems that it's something quirky going on with Outlook 2007. If it helps we are running Exchange 2003 and Outlook Web Access.

Turns out that we aren't going to use the reminder function--at least not currently, but I will be happy to help if you need anymore information. Thanks so much for all of your assistance Roger.