Introducing the To-Do Bar
To help people get a handle on their time and tasks, we are introducing the To-Do Bar into Outlook.
Outlook 12
Instead of looking at scraps of paper, notepads, planners, and the Outlook Inbox, you can see everything you need to do simply by looking at the To-Do Bar. The To-Do Bar shows a Date Navigator (a small monthly calendar), your upcoming appointments, and a list of your tasks on the side of the screen. In the To-Do Bar, you can accept/decline meetings, quickly access the full Calendar, add new tasks, categorize, rearrange, and change the dates of your tasks all while responding to e-mail. With the new To-Do Bar, you may never leave your Inbox.
We wanted to provide a light weight view on one’s time and tasks – to help people to better prioritize their time. Hopefully you will find that the To-Do Bar, and the rest of the time management system will help you do just that.
Some more details and a little background
Outlook 12: The To-Do Bar
During site visits, we discovered that people frequently referred to desk calendars or their system clocks when looking for date (sometimes changing their system clocks in the process - oops.) To help with this simple task, we added a Date Navigator to the To-Do Bar, which allows you to find a date with just a glance. In addition, clicking on a date in the Date Navigator takes you to the Calendar, making it even easier to get to this oft visited place.
For many of us, what we can accomplish in a day is dictated by what appointments and meetings we have. By default, the To-Do Bar shows your next three appointments. Like the Date Navigator, the appointments in the To-Do Bar look and act just like they do in the Calendar: you can right-click on them to accept/decline meetings, change privacy settings, apply a Color Category, forward, print, and open.
Through our time management research, we found that people are likely to use scraps of paper or notepads to keep track of the tasks they need to complete because a) the content of these lists is always visible and b) it is easy to add items. Therefore, in the To-Do Bar, we made tasks always visible and added an easy task entry point where tasks can be entered without switching context.
To add a task to the To-Do Bar, you can:
- Type in the easy task entry line in the To-Do Bar
- Flag a mail item or a contact
- Drag a mail item or a contact to the task list portion of the To-Do Bar
- Hit Control-Shift-K to create a new task
- Click New->Task
(And this is just within Outlook. You can also create tasks in SharePoint, OneNote, and Project and have them show up in Outlook too.)
We also improved upon paper lists by making it easy to manage your tasks once they are in the list. Once a task is in the To-Do Bar, you can:
- Drag it between groups to rearrange it
- Drag it with in a group to set its priority
- Add a category to make it stand out
- Change the arrangement to pivot your tasks by different fields (date vs. category)
- Click on the task to rename it – without overwriting the subject of the mail or contact.
In cell editing in the To-Do Bar: Changing to-do title of flagged e-mail with subject "Getting Things Done" to "Write to GTD group."
The To-Do Bar also filters out completed items, keeping your list tidy.
You can change the arrangement of tasks in the To-Do Bar by using the arrangement drop down. This feature enables you to easily switch from viewing your tasks by start date to due date to categories, etc. You can even specify your own custom arrangement.
To prevent you from losing your tasks, overdue tasks continue to "roll over" to the present day until they are marked complete, deleted, or the flag is cleared. If you don’t complete your tasks, they will begin to accumulate in the Today grouping. However, we have kept the coloring of overdue tasks so that you can tell which are overdue.
Because not everyone works in the same way, we have tried to make the To-Do Bar as flexible as possible. The task list can be customized in the same ways that lists in the Task Module can be customized. (For example, you can turn off the coloring of overdue tasks by clicking on the Arrange by: header in the To-Do Bar, then Custom…, and then change the settings in Automatic Formatting.) You can also change the number of Date Navigators and appointments shown in the To-Do Bar by going to the View menu then to To-Do Bar (in Beta 1, you may have to expand the menu to see the To-Do Bar option on the View menu.)
While one of the To-Do Bar's advantages is that it's always visible, you can also minimize it, thereby allowing for more space for viewing mail while still providing useful information such as the time and subject of the next appointment and the number of remaining tasks on the day
The hope is that the flexibility we have provided will let you work any way that you are accustomed to – while still providing valuable information to help you get your job done.
Comments
Anonymous
December 20, 2005
Here's one of the customizations I've looked for in a Todo list: I want some sort of highlighting (gradient coloring, perhaps) for the relative "age" of a task; how long it has been sitting on my Todo list.Anonymous
December 20, 2005
This is awesome stuff. I can't wait to use it (staying away from the internal beta for now ;)
What's the likelihood that these "new" task types synchronize as-is to a Windows Mobile device? Without the same task list on my smartphone/PDA, it's kind of hard to stay up-to-date on things while on the go.Anonymous
December 21, 2005
Hi are there any plans to offer a project center similar to what is in the Mac version of Outlook or will this offer the same functionality.Anonymous
December 21, 2005
There are no plans to offer Entourage-like project center at this time. Thanks for the comment!
-MelissaAnonymous
December 22, 2005
I don't have access to O12, so this question might be a simple one to answer: any chance to have week numbers added to date navigator. Week numbers are heavily used in planning here in Europe.Anonymous
December 22, 2005
I love the To-Do Bar! Been testing OL "12" beta-1 for about a month now. It's great!Anonymous
December 27, 2005
Melissa,
An idea: A drag and drop feature to start the To Do bar (obiusly from the Task bar at the bottom left side of Office)
Unfortunately I do not have the beta, so if this feature already exists, I apologize in advance.Anonymous
December 28, 2005
Ariel,
I think that there are two aspects of the To-Do Bar that might interest you.
1) You can drag and drop mail to the To-Do Bar to flag it.
2) You can minimize/collapse the To-Do Bar and then drag to it to cause it to open.
-MelissaAnonymous
December 28, 2005
Malissa,
Thanks for your replay. The two dragging and drop features you mentioned I really like.
Still thinking it would be a good feature to be able to open (not only minimize/collapse) the To Do Bar by dragging-and-drop the Task bar (the one which is located at the bottom left side of Outlook).
Perhaps in the next release?, please...!!!
ArielAnonymous
January 04, 2006
Great stuff!
I've been using Consistency from Sciral for tracking/managing reoccuring tasks. It's pretty limited in functionality but I do love the visual layout
http://www.sciral.com/consistency/
I can see at glance what I've been, or not been, doing, if it's overdue, and when I need to do it next. I also love the fact that I can give a task a range of time when it needs to happen.
Similar functionality or the ability to add it to Outlook would be a great value add!Anonymous
January 05, 2006
This is awesome. I stumbled across your blog doing a search for "outlook task in mail view". I'd go for office 12 based on this alone!Anonymous
January 07, 2006
"With the new To-Do Bar, you may never leave your Inbox."
What a horribly depressing thought. In order to be productive it is absolutely necessary to get out of your inbox and direct your focus toward actionable work that can be completed. The calendar or the task list can help you focus on that... they let you be proactive in control and focused. The Inbox does the exact opposite. You become reactive, out of control, and scattered.
Other than allowing visibility of some appointments and making the view available from any folder and not just the calendar, I don't really see any new functionality over the old task pad.
I would much rather see some way of getting an overall view of all e-mail, tasks, appointments, notes, and documents associated with a given project. That would really be useful...Anonymous
January 24, 2006
Is there any integration with the sidebar that is coming in Vista? Ideally you would provide gadgets (I believe that is the name) for the three elements of the to-do bar that can be hosted in Vista's sidebar. I love the idea of having a sidebar style view into my tasks and calendar, but I would not like to have two, one from Outlook and one from Windows. It seems that the Windows one is in general more flexible, since one can host arbitrary gadgets on it and because it is visible all the time (if wanted), so I guess you guys should integrate.Anonymous
February 05, 2006
Just found your site. I am impressed with the To-Do-Bar concept. I have been a time management/organization skills coach for over 18 years. Until now Outlook has been lacking on task management capability. Is there a way to get a copy of the beta or what is the projected release date. My web site www.kelp.com will show you why I am interested.Anonymous
February 25, 2006
PingBack from http://blog.jensthebrain.de/archives/2006/02/25/office-12-outlook/Anonymous
March 09, 2006
>Once a task is in the To-Do Bar, you can:
Drag it between groups to rearrange it.
Can you still drag items between groups in a grouped view? I'm looking at Beta 1 and it doesn't seem to do that anymore. Earlier versions let you open, say, the By Categories view and change an item's category by dragging it do a different category group.Anonymous
March 09, 2006
You should be able to grab between groupings, when in the default arrangements, including the By Categories arrangement. You may be hitting a bug. We have made some improvements in this area since Beta1, so your issue may be fixed in a later build. If it is not, please file a bug. Thanks for being a Beta Tester!
-MelissaAnonymous
March 13, 2006
A column by Jason Fry in the WSJ (registration required) talks about how he's changing how he uses his...Anonymous
March 19, 2006
After a long journey from Brussels over Atlanta to Las Vegas, and on the day that Team Foundation Server...Anonymous
March 21, 2006
The tickler file is another concept that I first encountered in David Allen's Getting Things Done, though...Anonymous
April 13, 2006
Although I haven't installed the latest Beta 1 refresh of Outlook 2007 yet, I've already decided what...Anonymous
April 14, 2006
Here is a post from Hank Leukart about the Outlook 12 Calendar.
-Melissa
Over the past 15 years,...Anonymous
April 18, 2006
Recently, I received the following e-mail and I thought I would post my response:
Hi Melissa,
 ...Anonymous
April 20, 2006
Sorry, I don't get it! How do I get this (amazingly sounding) to-do-bar??Anonymous
May 24, 2006
or, "Everything you know about Word is wrong."
With all the talk about the SharePoint 2007 beta, it...Anonymous
May 31, 2006
The comment has been removedAnonymous
June 01, 2006
I'm trying to use the to-do bar and create tasks by flagging messages for follow-up, but nothing is showing up in the to-do bar. Is there more to it than just flagging a message?Anonymous
June 01, 2006
Brian,
Try clicking on the up arrow in the To-Do Bar that says "Today on top" to toggle the arrangement. Sometimes the To-Do Bar doesn't populate even though it should. E-mail me directly if that doesn't fix your problem.
-MelissaAnonymous
June 12, 2006
I found this site: www.taskanyone.com This is the best task management system I have seen in years.
gpAnonymous
June 20, 2006
Currently I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself. My inbox has only 5 items in it and while work...Anonymous
August 26, 2006
Very many thanks for a good work. Nice and useful. Like it!Anonymous
October 06, 2006
Any chance of using different sized to-do bars for different folders? I always show the folder list on the left side to have access to all the folders. When I'm in the inbox (or other e-mail folder) I would like a to-do bar that is one column wide, showing this and the next month. When I go to the calendar, I want it to be three columns wide as I don't need all the space in the calendar itself and I want to see more months ahead in the to-do bar.Anonymous
December 22, 2006
There is a feature available now from a Utility called TaskToCal that lets me set up my Tasks (To-Do list) such that Tasks can be linked with Calendar appointments. Doing this, if I create a task, with a linked Calendar appointment, if I move the Calendar appointment to another day, the Start/Due dates on the task automatically update. It is a great feature since it lets me schedule time to do the tasks (a Time management mandate)and lets me allocate To-Do activities in a way that reflects what I would do with pen and paper if I had a To-Do list and needed to decide what days I was going to do things on. Is this feature in Office 2007 Outlook.Anonymous
January 04, 2007
My company is currently on MS Outlook 2003. Anyway that I can get this To Do bar to work, if not is there some type of alternative that is very similar. Thanks for your time - the To-Do Bar looks great! MikeAnonymous
February 13, 2007
The comment has been removedAnonymous
March 16, 2007
I am enjoying the To-Do Bar, however I would like to be able to see all-day, untimed events and multiple-day events as well as appointments (with start and end times). I travel frequently for work and block out entire weeks when I will be out of the office and would like to see this show up. ThanksAnonymous
March 20, 2007
The comment has been removedAnonymous
March 22, 2007
I concur that the To-Do Bar adds a much needed view. However, it seems limited in that it only shows appointments from my primary / default calendar. How can it be set to show other calendar appointments? Am I missing something?Anonymous
April 17, 2007
I agree with the other writers - what about ALL DAY EVENTS?? They don't show. This is weird because on my pocket pc it will show both ALL/MULTI day events as well as scheduled events. Outlook should follow the ppc format.Anonymous
April 21, 2007
Me too. Gotta have all-day appointments.Anonymous
May 15, 2007
YES, I want all day appointments as well.Anonymous
May 24, 2007
Well, I certainly need the all-day-appointments as well.Anonymous
May 29, 2007
Not having all day appointments on the todo bar is a real bummer. I live my work life off of all day appointments.Anonymous
June 08, 2007
While I admit that I am using all day appointments for some things that may actually be tasks, I do still really need the functionality of all day tasks to show up on the to-do bar.Anonymous
June 16, 2007
+1 here. Inability to see all-day appointments is just bizarre. It's in a way worse than no to-do bar at all, as I've come to trust it and as a result almost missed a friend's marriage event grrrAnonymous
June 26, 2007
I agree. Need all day events on the to-do bar. How could they forget this?Anonymous
July 03, 2007
Yes all day appointments and ability to change whether on not appointments in the far future are visible or not would be excellent.Anonymous
August 17, 2007
The comment has been removedAnonymous
August 21, 2007
Yeah, what a strange decision not to include recurring appointments. As if the fact that they recur makes them any less important than one-time events.Anonymous
August 22, 2007
Just to clarify: Recurring appointments do appear on the To-Do Bar. All Day Events, which are not appointments, do not appear on the To-Do Bar. -MelissaAnonymous
September 03, 2007
The unfortunate reality is that events can have attendees, such as customers. Thus, customer expectations are set. Have these missing from the To Do Bar does not make any sense whatsoever. Using the abitrary designation of 'event' versus 'appointment' is meaningless to me as a user.Anonymous
September 06, 2007
Hi Melissa I supervise a helpdesk and we have just started using Outlook 2007. Each team member has their own inbox and also opens a second shared helpdesk inbox, which we use flagged categories to indicate who is dealing with which email. Is it possible for me to see the flagged items in the helpdesk inbox rather than the flagged items in my inbox. Thanks.Anonymous
September 17, 2007
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 27, 2007
I stumbled upon this blog searching for "to do bar all-day appointments". I also cannot understand why all-day appts don't show up. The only workaround is to schedule the "all-day" appt from 12:01AM - 12:00 AM for 1439 minutes. This has the unfortunate effect of placing the appointment across your entire day, but it does make it to the To-Do Bar. I say this is yet another example of an oversight/negligence by MS coders who have long moved onto something else and the marketing/support folks calling the oversight a "feature". Someone with some VBA skills and some empty slots on their To-Do Bar will build an add-on that works better and starts to get traction until MS wakes up and provides an update/feature release/new version...Anonymous
October 23, 2007
Hi, I like the To-Do bar and use it extensively. But one thing that I find a bit irksome is that if I want to view appointments on a future day, I have to open the whole calendar for it. It would be nice if I could just hover my mouse cursor over the date and a pop-up will list the appointments for the day. Thanks. SAFAnonymous
October 24, 2007
Showing All-Day events in the ToDo Bar is a must! Please update this soon!Anonymous
October 25, 2007
What! All Day appointments are not appointments?? Next they'll be telling us that Windows is actually Linux!!! :) Need those All day APPOINTMENTS in the To Do bar!Anonymous
November 14, 2007
PLEASE, PLEASE put all-day events in the To-DO bar! I cannot live without it! PLEASE!Anonymous
November 15, 2007
The comment has been removedAnonymous
November 30, 2007
+50 here. Our company has Outlook 2007 and everyone loves the to-do bar but hate the fact that all day appointments do not show. I constantly get calls and email about how to fix it. Great addition, short sighted implementation! FIX THIS ASAP!!!Anonymous
December 03, 2007
I agree with Vasili; having a To-Do Bar without all-day events is worse than not having one at all because you only have an incomplete view of items requiring your attention. I've caught myself on a couple of occasions almost missing something the next day because it didn't show up in my To-Do Bar. The To-Do Bar is too risky in it's current implementation; I'm disabling it until this oversight is corrected.Anonymous
December 03, 2007
Thank you for all of your comments. We are looking into all day events in the To-Do Bar. -MelissaAnonymous
December 05, 2007
All day events and appointments are one and the same. I cannot believe someone mised this. otherwise a great outlook tool. Any idea if and when its going to be fixed?Anonymous
December 06, 2007
There are many thousands Outlook users (like myself) who apply David Allen's "Getting Things Done" (GTD) model for time and task management to our personal and professional lives. For us, Outlook (married to a Pocket PC) is the system we have come to trust and rely on for keeping us organized, on task, and less stressed. For that, Outlook (especially 2007) is worth it's weight in gold, and I want to extend my deep personal gratitude to Outlook developers for your brilliance in developing one of the most valuable software resources I've ever used. With Outlook 2007's introduction of the To-Do Bar, you've made an amazing product even more amazing! What an incredible feature! That said, I'd like to add my voice in agreement with others who are asking for "all day events" to appear on the To-Do Bar. "All day events" are an extremely important piece of the GTD model, and for those of us who use the GTD model (now almost instinctively), having those "all day events" appear very clearly on the To-Do Bar would give us a complete, easy to see and process, at-a-glance picture of our Trusted System, eliminating the extra steps we must now take in switching between Inbox with To-Do Bar view and Calendar view. Thank you for thoughtfully considering my request. Thank you also for all you do in tooling Outlook. You are a brilliant team, and for your commitment to developing a resource that allows me to process information in a complete, intuitive, fluid, really almost organic way, I am very grateful. May you enjoy a wonderful holiday season, Jason Gilbert jason@govertical.orgAnonymous
December 09, 2007
PingBack from http://jeff.donnici.com/PermaLink,guid,aa67b836-910c-4923-916e-728b72eaa861.aspxAnonymous
January 06, 2008
PingBack from http://www.vesco.us/?p=58Anonymous
January 06, 2008
Folks, if you are tired of not being able to see all day events in your to-do bar, please consider joining the facebook group: Fix the Outlook To-Do bar for all and multi-day events http://cornell.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8195056702 If enough of us join, we could get Microsoft to recognize this travesty rather than the so-called "feature" they are calling it!Anonymous
January 08, 2008
I also found this page looking for a way to enable all day events in the to do bar. I googled it assuming it was a simple option I needed to set. I am stunned to find that this functionality was simply left out or forgotten about. Truely bizarre!Anonymous
January 20, 2008
Like many others I ended up here after Googling for a way to enable all day events in the to do bar. Presumed it was something I was missing. Can't understand how Microsoft missed something so basicAnonymous
February 04, 2008
Tally another person finding this thread by googling outlook to-do bar "all day events". Supremely annoying! Please fix it!Anonymous
February 12, 2008
The comment has been removedAnonymous
February 13, 2008
I just realized that my all day events aren't showing in the To-Do Bar. I agree that the To-Do Bar is a great feature but I see a huge flaw in not including all day events. Microsoft: Please add this feature!Anonymous
February 15, 2008
Add my name to the list of requestors for all- day events to show up in the To-Do-List in Outlook. How can it not be there? 'Outlook Today' shows them. How else are we to keep up with birthdays and anniversaries?Anonymous
March 17, 2008
If one checks the programmer's object model of Outlook, the all-day-event IS in fact an Appointment. Copied from VBA help: Outlook Developer Reference AppointmentItem.AllDayEvent Property AllDayEvent is thus one sort of Appointment. That means that not showing it in ToDo is more or less to be considered to be a bug :-)Anonymous
April 03, 2008
Why wasn't the "All day event" not showing in the todo bar not addressed in SP1. Actually, why did it ever get to the first release? When will this be fixed? I wonder how many people have missed important appointments due to this BUG. I wonder how much time has been wasted dealing with this. It's a tragedy. This one so called feature has encouraged me to get out on my own and start a software company. I see so many dumb mistakes like this all the time. I guess in that regard, thanks Microsoft. Maybe you will buy me up in the future and then I can go relax on the beach all day and then you can start destroying my product with features.Anonymous
April 16, 2008
A ToDo bar that only shows SOME of what I've got planned??!! What use is that? Another vote for fixing this!Anonymous
May 01, 2008
Add one more to the pile of "gimme my all day appointments in the to-do bar" This is almost as annoying as the new Word layout.Anonymous
May 21, 2008
How about ading All day and Multi day Appointments to the To-Do barAnonymous
December 17, 2008
PingBack from http://www.mensa.org.mx/blog/?p=378Anonymous
January 18, 2009
PingBack from http://www.keyongtech.com/1618593-insert-calender-in-mail-sectionAnonymous
January 21, 2009
PingBack from http://www.keyongtech.com/1565245-outlook-enter-tasks-in-main