Outlook: Convert email messages into tasks or meetings!
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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Categories: Outlook
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
by Oftherock on Jun 10, 2008 at 9:51 pm
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-Workday-Control-Microsoft-Outlook/dp/0974930423/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229774468&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
by Hugh Donohue on Dec 20, 2008 at 6:13 am