May

Outlook: Convert email messages into tasks or meetings!

Kevin on May 6th, 2008

Faithful LifeApps readers know that I don’t have a lot of patience with email and favor an aggressive approach to managing your Inbox.

Occasionally however, we’ll receive emails which require more time to respond to – and/or which don’t require a response immediately. OR… they’ll require collaboration with several colleagues who you’d like to meet with in order to formulate a response.

A little known technique enables you to add such messages to your calendar so you can formally schedule time for you – and your coworkers, if appropriate – to develop your response…

Let’s say you get an email which requests your response by a certain date and you’re buried until that day or the day before. In this hypothetical case I’ve sent an email to myself asking that I complete a “marketing scorecard” by May 12th. Completing this task won’t require a lot of time, but let’s say I can’t deal with it until the 9th or I need to consult with someone who’s out of the office until then…

If I left click on the email, I can drag it down to the Calendar OR Task icon on the Outlook Bar. In this case, I’ve dragged it to the Task icon. I simply set the due date as 9AM on May 12th, and the start date as May 9th. Once I click on “Save and Close,” it’s set as a Task in Outlook. (Incidentally, all examples here are from Outlook 2003 – but this should work in Outlook 2007 as well.)

Similarly, the same process will actually set aside time for me to deal with the issue as a meeting on my calendar, were I to drag the email to the Calendar icon in the Outlook Bar. The full content of the email is captured in the task or meeting details.

NOTE: as shown below, the original email will remain in my Inbox. IF I delete it, the Task or Meeting will remain in Outlook.

Try this technique the next time you want to set aside time to deal with an important email.

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-kc

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Outlook

7 Responses to “Outlook: Convert email messages into tasks or meetings!”

Oftherock
June 10th, 2008 at 9:51 pm

Hi Kevin,
I downloaded the expense tracking sheet and I was really blown away. Wow… I will be using it starting today. Great. I used to track my daily expenses but it was really incomplete because I did not get to track her expenses….

Thanks Kevin.

Oftherock

[Reply]
Hugh Donohue
December 20th, 2008 at 6:13 am

Kevin: Great tip! I have been using it for over a year now. I first discovered it when I found about Michael Linenberger, an Outlook and productivity consultant. His time and task-management system using Outlook can be found in his book “Total Workday Control Using Microsoft Outlook”. My time management, and especially my email management, improved at least 100% using his system. Nothing gets dropped unless I make the decision to prioritize the matter down, in favor of more important (not necessarily more urgent) matters.

His book can be found at
http://www.amazon.com/Total-Wo.....amp;sr=8-1

In addition to converting an email to a Task or an Appointment, he has tips to configure the Task Pad and Task Window to make them more useful. All three have made my task management much more effective.

Thanks again for the tip!

PS – Not sure how I missed this one the first time around…

Best wishes…/Hugh Donohue

[Reply]
Amar
August 5th, 2009 at 5:20 pm

Hi I was able to make an email into task but the attachments are missing in the task. Is there a way I could find the attachments too in the task.

thanks
Amar

[Reply]
Kevin Reply:
August 6th, 2009 at 8:30 am
Amar,
Great question!! Here’s how to do it (sorry, this will be a bit lengthy)– drag the email to Tasks to create a new task; adjust dates as necessary, and minimize the task. Leave the task open. Go back to Outlook and open the email by double clicking. Minimize it. Get the new task and the email, both minimized, side by side on your desktop. Left click on the attachment in the email to highlight it. Right click on it and click “Copy.” Then go to the new task you’ve created; put your cursor in the body of the task detail. Right click, and click on “Paste.” Then save the Task. That should do it. Try it and let us know! kc

[Reply]
Abid
October 1st, 2009 at 8:01 am

It worked great. Thank You Kevin.

[Reply]
Nathan Ellsworth
October 6th, 2009 at 3:06 pm

Great tip. Is there a way to have Outlook convert a message into a meeting, and automatically have the To: and Cc: people on the email become the meeting invitees?

[Reply]
Kevin Reply:
October 6th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
Nathan, you can drag a message into your Outlook calendar, but you’re going to have to manually set up everything – date, start and end times, attendees, etc. But the body of the message should show up in the meeting invitation. (I am writing this from memory, but think I’ve got it right.) Thanks for commenting! kc

[Reply]