Tips for Outlook Email and Tasks
One of my clients recently attended a webinar on how to utilize Outlook Email and Tasks more efficiently. It wasn’t a deep dive, and it wasn’t recorded, so my client had a lot of questions.
Here’s a round-up of tips related to his questions about Outlook email, tasks and calendar:
*Outlook default: open first to calendar instead of email so you can plan your day before getting sucked into email
To make Outlook open to your calendar by default, you can change your settings so that the calendar folder is the first thing you see when you open the application:
- Go to File > Options
- Select Advanced
- Find Outlook start and exit
- Select Browse
- Choose your Calendar folder to be the default option
- Select OK
You can test this by closing and then reopening Microsoft Outlook.
*See the right-click method for copying an email into a Task and preserving the original email:
https://www.k2technologies.net/convert-an-email-to-task-in-outlook
*This isn’t the exact info we were looking for regarding how to add Priority level to your Task column in the calendar view, but you might find this information helpful (block time for Tasks/To-Do):
https://youtu.be/yMAlafieEF8?si=NhgeF6Wcka_fiSGy
*This “How to Use Outlook Tasks” video from Gateway Productivity explains (at 1:44) what is shown on To Do List vs Task List:
https://youtu.be/crpagQIV9Mg?si=bOLv5lRS919NFP4j
*This is a different take on viewing your to-do list and calendar at the same time:
https://youtu.be/lNkmWCtkvZg?si=T2hkqxVXT-dt0rvH
*Controlling the display of tasks in the Outlook Mail view:
*Outlook Tips & Tricks to Take Control of your Inbox:
https://youtu.be/_DTI-9DnV_g?si=gVjWfzDDUV5CuKpK
This video is 3 years old, so the look of Outlook has changed a bit, but the concepts should be the same.
*Outlook Calendar Tips & Tricks
https://youtu.be/6BU_ELSsDLc?si=EDF5LKu4NeeNJ9oS
For more tips on how to better manage any calendar or inbox, check out The Inefficiency Assassin: Time Management Tactics for Working Smarter, Not Longer.
