I find this very annoying also. There are many times I need to do this to clean up my calendar but don't want to bother the others with the cancellations. This is especially true for recurring meetings or where a meeting went short and I just want my calendar to reflect actuality.

We use a free time meeting to inform co-workers of all day travel or vacation plans. Once I send the free-time meeting, I don't really want it cluttering up the top of my calendar. Fix definitely needed.

Taking away user flexibility for something like this is a completely wrong direction for Microsoft to have taken Outlook 2007, and it's not the only one. Hey, Microsoft! Wake up! Fix this, please!

I've noticed in some circumstances(depending on who organized the meeting)I am able to delete the invitees names then save and close. Then, I can delete without sending a cancellation.

Excellent! That worked a treat for me. Delete the attendees first, save meeting, then delete from calendar.

Go under File, and select Work Offline. Make all changes to the calendar, go into Outbox, delete all outgoing messages which are your updates, then go back under file and select Work Offline again. Outlook will reconnect and all changes will be in affect without updates being sent. Horrible that you have to do the work around, but not really a bad one.