Though I have used Outlook as an email client for about couple of years now – I recently figured a nice way to convert “Emails” to “Tasks” in a Prioritized way. One way to think about emails is that it’s a mechanism via which others assign work to you. Some work may be more important than the other. Wouldn’t it nice to just take an email (that has some “to-do” work for you) and put in a Prioritized To-DO format? Yes? Turns out Outlook can do that for you! In this blog-post, I am going to show you how.
Here are the steps for Outlook 2010 (Desktop Version):
1. Select an Email. Drag it to the TASKS (in the bottom left corner of the navigation pane)
2. Now it will add the content of the email as the description of the Task and it will let you select:
- Subject
- Start Date
- Due Date
- Status
- Priority
- Reminder
3. And you’re done! you can do so for more than one emails – After you COMPLETE a task you can mark it complete.
4.When I get in the “work mode”, the first thing I see is my Task- List. If you want to see your Tasks:
Navigation Pane > Tasks section > Just select “Tasks” (and not To-DO list) to see the Tasks (you can sort it by subject, due date, categories)
5. Note this is similar to “flagging” an email and then assigning the follow up data to it. But I find Dragging the Email to Tasks and then setting the priority simpler.
So that’s about it. Do you use this feature? No? Would you use it? Also, Do share outlook tips with me – I am always looking for things that can make me more productive!