When we create categories, we’re going to number them so they arrange themselves in order of priority. Since we’re going to use categories for actionable emails we need to create different categories for different kinds of actions. To modify your categories or add more colors to Outlook Categories, go to All Categories. If you’ve never used categories before, then the defaults will be named after different colors. To add a category to an email, select an email, right-click and go to categorize. In order to group emails that need similar action together, we’re going to use categories.
It’s more efficient than multitasking and switching back and forth between different kinds of tasks. Batching refers to the process of grouping similar tasks together.
This prevents us from taking advantage of one an important productivity strategy, batching. The downside is that your inbox doesn’t allow you to prioritize and organize your tasks as well as other tools. Your email inbox works the same way, it’s supposed to be for receiving, yet a lot of people keep emails in their inbox to remind them to do something. Here’s why: you don’t keep your to-do list and your filing cabinet in your mailbox right? Your mailbox is for receiving, your filing cabinet is for storing important papers for later and your to-do list is for getting things done. But why would we want to do that? Why not just flag emails and use that as a to-do list? We need a different approach to organize emails that need us to take action. In the last article, we created a folder structure to organize the emails we need to keep for future reference.
How to begin a list of tasks in outlook how to#
Last updated on July 3, 2012.In this article, you’ll learn how to use color categories in Outlook to organize your to-do list and actionable emails. You can change the start/due date for tasks created in the "new item" row using date shortcuts in the Due date field or by clicking on the flag and choosing one. In older versions of Outlook, right click on the row of field names and choose Current view, then Other Settings. In Outlook 2010, this is on the View ribbon, View Settings, Other Settings. If the new item "Click here" row is not displayed, you can turn it on in the Custom view settings. To change the default Quick Click, right click on the flag column and choose Set Quick Click. When the Quick Click is set for Today, the reminder is 1 hour before the end of your work day.
But if you use the To-Do List or the To-do Bar, the task picks up the end date from the default Quick Click.
When you use the Click here to add a task row (or double click in it to open a task form), and are in Tasks, there is no start and end dates set. You can use date shortcuts, like 1d, 3w etc, but you need to enter a date. You need to tab into the fields and enter the dates. When you use the New button, Tasks have no start and end date by default. If using the new item row, where are you when you create the task: the Tasks folder or the To-Do List (or To-Do Bar)?.Are you using the New button or using the Click here to add a new Task new item row?.How do you change the default start date of a task to be today? Every new task defaults to None for the start and due date. How you create the new task form plays a part too, even which folder you are looking in when you type in the new item row makes a difference. The default you choose for Quick Click affects the default reminder date and time, as well as the default start and due dates. I've written about Tasks and default reminders at least once or twice, but this bears repeating: