while we completed our transition to Outlook 2007 at work several months ago, I have been allowed to keep my personal copy of ECCO on my machinefor use. But, I am am slowly trying to more of my data into Outlook because they will probably not allow me to keep Ecco forever. Much of my work revolves aroound specifically assigned projects, and Ecco easily handles my needs related to project-specific tasks. In Outlook 2007, there are Tasks, To-Do's (and a notebook) that I have minimally used. but, I would now like to starthandling project-specific tasks on Outlook, but am still a bit confused about how Outlook 2007 handles tasks vs. to-do's. I am reading through as much as I can absorb about this topic, but any helpful hints or advice would also be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

--Ken

Ken.

I do not have an English Outlook. But in my Outlook 2007 there are tasks and appointments and notes. Appointments have fixed dates, tasks don't (though a task may have a due date and a reminder).

I think you may be confused by the fact that there is a task pane (don't know what it's called in the English Outlook) residing to the right of the calender view. That pane also shows the tasks/to-do's.

Franz

Franz,

I did find some information that states that "a to-do item is any Outlook item - such as a task, message or contact - that has been flagged for follow-up." While this is certainly easy to understand, their layout in the various windows is not the easiest to follow. The Calendar has a Task section, while the Mail has a To-Do Bar. Not necessarily a bad concept, but poorly organized and labelled. Its is going to take some time to wrap my mind around "Outlook logic".

--Ken

The Outlook 2007 (and 2010) Task vs. To-Do distinction drives me crazy.
In my workflow, if I want to see calendar items or emails, I will look at the calendar tab or the email tab. I don't want emails in my tasks. But Outlook 2007/10 defaults to displaying the "to do" list every time I go to the task pane. Then I have to click on "Tasks" to see what I really want. I wish they had an option to hide "to do's" in the UI.

Ken.

?a to-do item is any Outlook item - such as a task, message or contact - that has been flagged for follow-up.?

Ah, I see. Any element that is flagged for follow-up is also added to the task planner in Outlook 2007. So you can flag an e-mail for follow-up (and enter a reminder date or a due date for that). The e-mail remains in the inbox and the "to-do" (i.e. the follow-up) is automatically added to the task planner (including reminder and due date).

BTW: You can only flag messages and contacts for follow-up - not tasks (as the quote you referred to states). Flagging tasks for follow-up wouldn't make sense.

Speaking of "making sense": There are a lot of things in Outlook that are illogical and counter-intuitive.

Franz
(editor-in-chief of a German print newsletter on Outlook)

You can tag the tasks, and other items in Outlook 2007 like Contacts and Appointments, by "Category" - the categories could be your projects. There are alternate views in Outlook 2007 which then allow you to view tasks, etc., grouped by categories.

I also use an Outlook add-on from Franklin Covey called "Plan Plus for Outlook". It allows you to create projects, and sequence your Outlook tasks within projects (and sub-projects), and view the tasks in a project organized structure. It does not do anything with Appointments or Contacts. Please be aware, the current version of Plan Plus is v6 and Franklin Covey has said they will release v7 during the first quarter, which means within the next month. If you were to buy Plan Plus today, you might want to be aware of what it would cost you to step up to v7 when it's available. Plan Plus implements the whole Franklin Covey system, but I ignore that part and just use it to organize tasks into projects. I also like the different views it provides, which work better for me than the standard Outlook views.

Finally, Microsoft OneNote allows you to define tasks within OneNote and have them automatically appear in Outlook. It does not work the other way, that is, you cannot define a task in Outlook and have it automatically appear in OneNote. I generally take notes and lay out plans in OneNote, and then define actual tasks by flagging items - they will then be seen in Outlook.

I am using these programs on my company-owned laptop with Outlook 2007 and OneNote 2007, on a Windows XP machine. At home, I am using the same programs with the Office 2010 beta on a Windows 7 64-bit machine. No problems with either setup.

Its just about a year later, and I am going to revive this old thread because I am again having some fits with Outlook. It has been acceptable for a simple tak manager, but I am now adding a new, discrete work program to my existing duties, and would like to keep the tasks related to this program separate from my other duties. I really do not want to use Outlook's categories because I am already using those for my existing projects. I was then hoping to "Add New Group" in my Tasks pane for this discrete work, but I found out that its only purpose is a place to put folders. So, I then thought of creating a new "folder", for this project, but I am not clear how a task folder behaves in Outlook. I know that it is not the same as a folder in Windows, but task folders also seem different than mail folders that reside in the Mail pane. I have tried searching the web for some useful infromation about how to best use folders and tasks in Outlook (version 2007), but have had no luck. It seems that the task feature in Outlook is the orphan child. Any useful infromation about using folders in the task pane would be greatly appreciated. And, why is the folder icon an image of a task? It seems confusing because I would suspect that this should be the icon for a task itself, not a folder.

On a semi-related note, I hope the Outlook and Word teams at Microsoft have a look at Google Docs later feature: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2011/03/introducing-discussions-in-google-docs.html . It seems that they canabalized Google Wave and incorporated their discussions feature into Google Documents. I cannot wait for the day when e-mail will be transformed into a unfied, item-centric, threaded discussion. Trying to have multiple parties review and comment on a document via e-mail is like hearding cats!

--Ken

Hi Ken.

----- quote -----
Its just about a year later, and I am going to revive this old thread because I am again having some fits with Outlook. It has been acceptable for a simple tak manager, but I am now adding a new, discrete work program to my existing duties, and would like to keep the tasks related to this program separate from my other duties. I really do not want to use Outlook?s categories because I am already using those for my existing projects. I was then hoping to ?Add New Group? in my Tasks pane for this discrete work, but I found out that its only purpose is a place to put folders. So, I then thought of creating a new ?folder?, for this project, but I am not clear how a task folder behaves in Outlook. I know that it is not the same as a folder in Windows, but task folders also seem different than mail folders that reside in the Mail pane. I have tried searching the web for some useful infromation about how to best use folders and tasks in Outlook (version 2007), but have had no luck. It seems that the task feature in Outlook is the orphan child.
Any useful infromation about using folders in the task pane would be greatly appreciated.
----- end quote -----

I find the folders useful for separating tasks for different projects. This way you can see either all tasks (no matter what folder it is in) - when you select the Vorgangsliste (don't know the English name - it's the element above the various task folders, it has a flag instead of a to-do icon). And you can see only the tasks for a particular project, when you select the corresponding folder.

A nice article on how to use folders for different projects can be found here:

http://www.brighthub.com/office/project-management/articles/15951.aspx

----- quote -----
And, why is the folder icon an image of a task? It seems confusing because I would suspect that this should be the icon for a task itself, not a folder.
----- end quote -----

Well. Someone in Redmond must have decided that it is a great idea (they also do this in the address book: here a folder has the same icon as a contact). It is confusing, you're right.

Franz

Hi Franz,

Thank you for the reply and for the link to that series of articles. I am looking forward to reading it!

--Ken

I make no bones about hating Outlook, and discarded it long ago. I just wish somebody would take the amazing concepts behind Everdesk Optima (www.everdesk.com) and develop them further. Sadly this extraordinary mail client (which treats e-mails and files as identical, so acts as a mail client + file manager + file previewer) has not been under development for several years now, but it can still be downloaded and admired. Please note that it DOESN'T keep e-mails in a single enormous file (like Outlook); it stores them as separate items in folders, just like documents.

Surely the day of total convergence can't be too far away? Increasingly the distinction between e-mail, documents and other sorts of data seems arbitrary...