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Microsoft To Do vs Outlook Tasks
Is Microsoft To Do replacing Outlook Tasks? Or how do they work together? Is Outlook Tasks being retired? I'm a Technology Adoption Analyst who co-leads our Champions program and we want to make sure we're recommending the right tools for task management 🙂
WillDeHaan hey, good questions
Why are there 2 places for To Do tasks?
Outlook tasks have been around for a long time and there would be users who still use it and the features are slightly different.
Is there a best practice or best overall tool to use for this? Is To Do a better tool to push to our end users since it integrates with Planner and Teams and Outlook?
I'd be promoting To Do for individuals.
- It has its own handy features (lists, grouped lists, smart lists, list sharing, tags, recognised dates, My Day etc)
- It's integrated with Microsoft Teams
- It surfaces your Planner items
- It surfaces flagged emails
- It has a dedicated app with mobile widgets
- I want to see and edit my task list within the Outlook application just like it is in the older desktop version (not the "New Outlook"). I don't want to be taken to a website just to see and edit my tasks for the day. It's inefficient not to have everything in one place, categorized, and color coded with details included within the list. To Do is not the same thing at all.
Whoever decided to removed the Task feature must not use it as intended or they wouldn't have done that. - New Outlook is a DISASTER. The new To Do functionality is NOT fit for purpose. The original task functionality in Outlook is a key driver for continuing to use Outlook.
- Yes, "New Outlook is a DISASTER". Period! I don't want to see sent items in the inbox folder and the list goes on. Also, it looks like MANY of us still struggle with which to use, Tasks, To Do, Planner, Lists, Etc. Please bring back Wunderlist AS IT WAS. It did everything Microsoft To Do/Lists/Tasks/Planner does, in one program accessible on/offline.
Hi Will,
Late to the party on this but as another contributor said I think its a case of picking what suits your workflow and ultimately they can all work together and complement each other.
I try and maintain (and largely fail) to operate inbox to zero in my Outlook. I use flags for scheduling time to respond to emails, I create reminders/tasks directly in my Outlook Calendar, and I use MyDay in To-Do to manage my working day - I find it a good way to cut out the noise and focus on tasks for the day at hand. I also like that I can type a task with a description that will shedule it for you in To-Do e.g. "Do this task at 3pm on Monday" and it will schedule it.
Hope this perspective is useful - feel free to reach out if you'd like to know more.
- Over 20 years ago we implemented Outlook across our entire enterprise from Lotus Notes, the competitor at that time. The tasks with delegation feature along with automatic task progress updates made an impressive impact and reduced internal email significantly. Like -30%.
Unfortunately it appears things have gotten messy at MS and the products, in particular the cloud version are so dumbed down they often are useless. Today we are facing exactly the same dilemma as you are, internally and as advisor to our clients. Happy to share our current approach in the hope it may help you as well as highlight to the MS moderators the issues we face when seemingly geeks instead of business experts set the specifications and interoperability products.
Excuse the short bullet point style...
1. Personal "to do or tasks" - use whatever tool you are used to, and make sure it syncs with your phone and categories and flags are included. We support a variety of add-on apps that sync between platforms, apps and devices.
2. Team based tasks - we moved to Outlook and Teams new "To do" as this is the future. Indeed, like many we suffer from the extreme dumbed-down functionality and the inherent lack of industry best practices missing in the product. Pity no no-one at MS actually asks us. Ahem, sorry to have to say so.
To mitigate some of these shortcomings we have integrated Planner and in particular a KanBan view for each internal function, (Finance, IT, Marketing, sales, etc) and major internal projects. This provides team task visibility located directly in a Team chat level and is focused on their day-to-day.
Our current work-in-progress is to link this with calendars, individual and shared team calendar so that people can perform their basic time management and planning. Ideally they should be able to click on selected calendars to display meaningful overlays. Like company events and major business cycles, like invoicing, budgeting, appraisals etc.. We haven't yet figured out how best to link to do with blocking time in calendar(s) and have given our champions the task of trying out different possibilities to see which works out best. Happy to share progress.
Still a major adoption obstacle is when the cloud or Mac version lags behind, In particular Excel cloud does not run essential macros or VB routines and MS is increasingly making "open in APP" user unfriendly. Custom fields in contacts that are essential for any organization are also not supported on the cloud and mobile platforms with no visibility if ever this will be. We currently use 3rd party add-ons as a messy work-around. Custom contact fields is such a basic requirement for any business it is astonishing to understand the lack of support. Ho-hum.
Hope this helps, thumbs up or contact me if you'd like to hear on our progress...I just started using the new Outlook and my fears have come true, they have taken out Native tasks from Outlook and just have web-based to-do tasks. Sadly now I have to be connected to the internet to use my task. Please Microsoft do not lose native tasks they are the backbone of the email client. The todo applies so useless and clumsy to use it as a very poor substitute.
I've used Outlook from on-premise Exchange in the earliest forms in the early 2000's, to O365 currently and all along that use, Tasks have been an integral and foundational reason I still use MS Office. The ToDo option, for those that use Tasks is simply a waste of time. I doesn't come close to the capability of Tasks in terms of the settings, the reminders, the drag/drop capacity for an email, calendar, file attachments & flags/categories and such to become a task. Quite literally, Tasks is it's own wonderful database and a great resource to have onhand. It is a project management tool, a Wiki (advanced search is amazing), and with the ability to send/assign to others on our teams Word/Excel docs which we use in Teams all the time. ToDo is similar to the "new Outlook" which is woefully underpowered compared to the full version. This, I saw even on my new MacookPro running Office, where the "new" version was the 1st to load but I quickly switched to the full. There, Mac still doesn't have ALL the tools of the Windows version of full Outlook, but it's close. It's a shame that MS would even consider deprecating Tasks - when so many look alike apps exist, Tasks is still better than most (MOnday.com, Trello, OneNote/Evernote (which I use for personal projects), and so on and so forth. To put it bluntly, the reason we continue to use MS Office 365 is Tasks, and then Email/Outlook - and if Tasks go away it goes without saying we won't stay with Office365
- I have relied on the rich feature set offered by Outlook Tasks to manage the workflow in my medical practice and find Microsoft To Do in its current form to be a totally inadequate replacement. For over fifteen years, I have modeled much of my use of Outlook Tasks from the Total Workday Control books by Michael Linenberger that highlight the tremendous power and flexibility provided by Tasks.
I appreciate the need to offer a simpler interface for new users as Microsoft To Do provides, but I hope with its introduction that the more advanced task management needs of longtime users of Outlook Tasks will not be overlooked. Hopefully, and perhaps most simply, both apps can be retained in the new Outlook for Windows to achieve "the best of both worlds."- I also have adopted Total Workday Control by Michael Linenberger with great success using Outlook Tasks. It would be impossible to replicate in To Do.
I agree with Harold3 that To Do and Tasks should both be supported. This would meet the needs of a simpler interface (To Do) for some, and the more advanced needs (Tasks) of others.
- I have used a highly-customized Outlook to do and task list to stay organized for decades. If the Tasks function is being replaced by To Do, there's no reason to stay with Outlook. I might as well just use Todoist, which integrates much better with services like Alexa and Google than To Do does. Too bad.
- The To Do replacement is worse in every way.
Agreed. The deficiencies in To Do vs Outlook Tasks go far beyond those mentioned in this thread.
When Outlook became available on Android, I was stunned to find the lack of integration to Tasks and it's replacement with To Do which represented a complexly different and cumbersome heuristic. I found To Do so unusable that I defer all my task management to Outlook Tasks on the desktop.
It boggles the mind to try and imagine what led MS designers to conclude To Do is an appropriate replacement.
While I am a long time user of Office products, especially Word and Excel, it's Outlook that manages my life, driven by heavy use of Tasks and Appointments. If To Do does replaces Tasks, Outlook no longer has value for me and since there are acceptable alternatives to Word, Excel and Outlook, my Office subscription would no longer have value as well.
- Apologies for also jumping in on this conversation. I'm a GTD user, and struggle with the syncing of paper (for writing notes at meetings, even online meetings) and electronic (Outlook calendar and email). I live using my calendar, everything I do is time bound, including tasks. I've never used Outlook tasks because I didn't have the patience to figure out how to easily turn a time bound (not necessarily start or end date constrained) task into a calendar entry in order to process it amongst everything else. I was hoping ToDo might be better at this, but in the very short time I played with the mobile app, I figured it wasn't any better. I'm about to invest in some material from the GTD shop on setting up one or the other, but I don't know which one to invest in. Neither of them are even close to say Nirvana but that's for another day.
SteveR750 There have been posts out there about using To Do and GTD together like this one: Request to support Getting Things Done (GTD) workflow - Microsoft Community Hub
Using hashtags and list groups can get you there. You can also sync categories with Outlook to add another layer of sorting.
Personally, I'm jealous of anyone who can stick to it! I've tried a few times to get into a good routine but my workflow's a bit more of a hybrid at the moment.
- I'm hesitant to fully trust Microsoft on their push towards "To-Do". While they seem keen on promoting it and asking me every time in outlook to check it out, in my experience, it falls significantly short of being an effective tool. One of the primary activities I engage in is opening up all my tasks for the week to review them individually. In "To-Do", this becomes a tedious and time-consuming process.
The task filtering system in "To-Do" leaves much to be desired. In contrast, "Tasks" offers a plethora of advanced options for filtering and rule creation. "To-Do" simply doesn't measure up in this regard. Additionally, "Tasks" provides a more intuitive user interface, making it easier to navigate and manage tasks efficiently. The flexibility and customization options in "Tasks" are far superior, allowing users to tailor their experience according to their needs.
In summary, while Microsoft's "To-Do" may be their preferred task management tool, "Tasks" offers a more comprehensive and user-friendly experienceWe have replacement under development now. AXEO
- Just a day or two ago Outlook asked me if I wanted to have To Do be my default app for tasks (I've not got the preview running). I said Yes. Sigh of relief! I still have to check if this is what others are seeing as well.
- I wanted to add my concern for the advanced user in case they do shift to To Do and eliminate Outlook tasks. I know this may not happen, but I wanted to be a voice for the many advanced users I have taught over the years that use OneNote task integration extensively as well as the advanced options in Outlook Tasks. (I cannot live without reminders for my tasks with a date option, as that helps me when I take notes; I always choose custom for my Outlook tasks within OneNote, so I can use the reminder option because I need reminders!) I will look around and see if there is somewhere else I can express this concern as well.
- I now only see TO DO. Since a few months I combined using Outlook Tasks with the TO DO app. I like TO DO for regular daily use. One thing TO DO lacks is the possibility to add e-mails as files. You can only upload files from your computer. I work with a shared mailbox and reminders/flags in the shared mailbox do NOT appear as reminders in mij TO DO (as this appears to be only linked to my personal mailbox). As a work around I dragged the e-mail manually to the Outlook task I created in TO DO. Now that Tasks in Outlook is discontinued, this option does no longer exist. Very annoying.
Petra-Van-Horen I can see why you would use Outlook Tasks for that. If you want to revert back, this link had some info that could help: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/all/how-do-i-change-back-to-outlook-tasks-from-the-to/4558977a-57a1-4669-bf5d-b8e700f34cf1
