Forum Discussion
Microsoft To Do vs Outlook Tasks
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
- 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.
I am currently using ToDo.ist (free version) -- it is OK but doesn't integrate easily with Outlook. I was interested in Tasks because I have received a couple of prompts recently telling me it was now on the Outlook tool bar. What I seem to be reading here is that Tasks may be going away and ToDo is an inferior solution. I'd love to link to my flagged emails, but still need to create tasks because the email subject line is not sufficient. Any thoughts welcome
(also, do ToDO.ist users think it is a superior solution anyway?)
