Flagged emails come to Microsoft To-Do
Published Mar 13 2019 03:30 AM 78.4K Views
Microsoft

UPDATED 05/07/19: The latest update (1.56) now lets you flag emails in your personal Microsoft-hosted account, e.g. Hotmail, Outlook or Live.com. The article has been edited to reflect this. 


Microsoft To-Do is always here to help you plan your day
, but sometimes an inbox full of urgent emails can get in the way of careful planning. Don’t worry, with our latest update, you won't have to juggle your emails and your task list—you can now add your flagged emails to To-Do, giving you one unified view of what you need to accomplish today.   

 

Flag your emails and see them in To-DoFlag your emails and see them in To-Do

Set up your day  

Like to triage your email when you first arrive at the office? Now, as you get to the emails that need a reply or need to be worked on you can flag them and carry on, knowing that they’ll be waiting for you when you open To-Do. If it's an email you need to deal with urgently then you can flag it with a high priority, and when you open To-Do you'll see that it's been starred as important.

 

 

Plan your day with My DayPlan your day with My Day

Once you have worked through all your emails you can open To-Do and start planning your day—you’ll find all your flagged emails in the Flagged Email list. Want to work on it today? Right-click on the task and add it to “My Day”—giving you a more coherent view of what your day will look like and what you can accomplish. And if you don’t have the bandwidth for it today, then add a due date or a reminder to deal with it later. Break your tasks into stepsBreak your tasks into steps

 

Get to work on your email 

It’s time to get to work ticking off that list. Click on the flagged email task and you’ll find a preview of the email and a button to take you to the Outlook website, or your mobile app, where you can see the full email and reply to it. Not ready to reply to it just yet? Jot down some ideas in the notes section or break down your task into Steps.  

If you are halfway through writing an email and get pulled away to a meeting, flag the draft email and it will also show up in To-Do, reminding you that it still needs to get ticked off when you get back to your desk.  

 

Get started 

Let’s get you started, to enable flagged email you need to sign in to To-Do with the same account that you use for email (it must be a work or school account, or a Microsoft-hosted personal account, e.g. Hotmail, Outlook or Live.com). An alert will pop up asking if you want to show the Flagged Email list. And, just like that, your flagged email will start pulling through to To-Do.  

Now, we don’t want to overwhelm you with a lot of out-of-date email, so we will only import up to 10 flagged email from the last two weeks. Want to see more than that? You can re-flag any that you want to see in To-Do and they will also turn up in the Flagged Email smart list. 

 

We want to hear from you 

As always, we’d like to hear from you—tell us what you think of our latest feature in the comments below, on Twitter or on Facebook

94 Comments
Copper Contributor

syncing of the marked emails is not working for me. If I flag an email, it won't show in the desktop app and also not in the ios app I use.. I was working before... what is the problem and solution?

Copper Contributor

syncing of the marked emails is not working for me. If I flag an email, it won't show in the desktop app and also not in the ios app I use.. I was working before. what is the problem and solution?

Copper Contributor

@Polly Davidson I can confirm the issue @DoCode is having. Due dates for flagged E-Mails are off one day, e.g. I flag an E-Mail in Outlook with due date Sunday. In To-Do it will show as Saturday. Also, when flagging the mail, the due date in Outlook is Sunday at first, and as soon as it is synced to To-Do, it will change to Saturday in Outlook too. I guess it is an time zone (I'm in UTC+1) related date calculation bug. I saw a similar behaviour when syncing Planner tasks with To-Do via Flow.

 

Is there a place to officially file this as a bug?

Copper Contributor

I would like to be able to share the list to other users (within org) and then assign a task to one of those users, as one can do in Wunderlist.  Is that a feature that is in the roadmap please?

Brass Contributor

This feature has really improved my use of To-Do :D

Just need Planner tasks to appear in the To-Do app, and it will be amazingly useful ;)

Copper Contributor

Is there any plan to bring these to outlook.com accounts? 

Copper Contributor

Sadly not working for me when I flag a mail in the Outlook desktop client.  It works when I do the same in OWA, but as my primary use of Outlook is desktop this is not so great for me right now.

 

 

Copper Contributor

It would be awesome if we could link to the entire email thread and not just one, static, email. The history of what is going on with that "task" is really tied into the whole email thread. The thread acts like a series of notes to the task.

Copper Contributor

I love this new feature but is there a way to make the Windows 10 app open the "Open in Outlook" links in Outlook instead of a web browser?

Copper Contributor

When I delete the flagging in the email the same entry still exists in Todo.App and is not deleted there, but is now just marked as completed.

I expected it would be deleted in Todo.App under "Flagged Emails," because only the flagging was removed and it was NOT marked as completed in the email...

Copper Contributor

Good idea but seems to be an issue with them actually pulling through. 

 

I have several flagged emails I can see in Outlook, but only one showing in ToDo flagged emails folder. 

 

I use Outlook desktop and also from my phone. 

Copper Contributor

Sync is dependent on what email app I use. If I flag an email in Android Outlook, it appears on the list. If I flag in another Android email app, it appears as flagged in Android Outlook and Windows Outlook, but not in To-Do, neither Android or Windows. If I open the email, flagged in an Android email app, in Windows, then it appears in To-Do on both platsforms.

Copper Contributor

I like to make my to-do list the night before as I am leaving for the day - that way when I come in to the office I don't have to sit there and create a list of things before getting started. Is a "tomorrow" list that turns into "today' something I should add to UserVoice? Or is there a workaround for me that's out there waiting to be used?

Copper Contributor

Great feature but definitely needs:

 

1. To unflag the message in outlook on completion of the task.

2. Open in outlook should open desktop version of outlook when running in Windows 10 NOT OWA!

3. Needs to be able to sync back a configurable number of days not hard coded to 14 days.

 

Any plans to do the above soon? Please?!

Iron Contributor

 

@michelle_kirk: Try setting the due date tomorrow. I think this will automatically add the task to your tomorrow's "My Day".

You can do this either by clicking your task and adding due date, or even better: just right click on the tasks and press "Due tomorrow". See screenshots below from the Windows App. I'm sure you can do about the same within the mobile app as well.

 

Picking due date from task detailsPicking due date from task detailsPicking due date directly from list view by right-clickingPicking due date directly from list view by right-clicking

Brass Contributor

I experience the same issue as some users have listed: when I flag an email (and I use the 'No Date' flag), the item appears as an overdue item. I would like it to appear without a date. Hope this will be solved soon as I do really appreciated the functionality!

Copper Contributor

@Polly Davidson Well done on getting flagged and also planner tasks into MS TD, 

 

One observation, when I flag an email is shows in the flagged email folder and I can add to My Day and tick it off.

 

HOWEVER, both flagged emails and planner tasks seem to create a duplicate task in the tasks folder, that when I tick off the flagged email task in my day or the flagged email folder, it does not tock off the duplicate task in the tasks folder.

 

????

 

Malcolm

Copper Contributor

@Polly Davidson To-Do is a great platform and nicely integrated in the main. Flagged emails in my inbox sync flawlessly, but if I flag an email in sent items it doesn't sync across to To-Do. Could this be added as a feature, as I often have to follow up on email conversations I have initiated and I don't have a received email in my inbox to flag.

Copper Contributor
I'd like to work with Outlook at the desktop and with To-Do with the smartphone. But when set a due date to a flagged email I can't change it to another date within outlook. It only syncs in one direction. Changing the date in To-Do changes also the date in Outlook, but changes made in Outlook are rolled back within few seconds. Could you please allow to sync changes of the dates in both directions? Thanks.
Copper Contributor

Hello!

 

The reason we don't want to sync older ones is because we don't want to import over a lot of old forgotten tasks and overwhelm people. But any emails that you flag or re-flag should show up.

This is something that really bothers me. Why do you think we would get overwhelmed by "a lot of old forgotten tasks". This is no reasoning at all. At least give me the CHOICE to sync ALL my flagged E-Mails please. Now I have to go through all my E-Mails and reflagg them, which is quite annoying - doable but annoying.

 

This is really bothering me in a lot of new Microsoft apps. I have no choice. Please stop patronizing us and give us back some choices. Don't worry - we won't get overwhelmed. We're IT-Professionals.

Copper Contributor

On IOS when I flag an email in the outlook app all of the emails in the conversation are carried over as individual tasks in to do.  It really makes this feature unusable.  

Copper Contributor

@Polly Davidson We have the same issue as @DoCode and others where emails flagged with due dates in Outlook have the wrong due date in To-Do.  I see that there's a userVoice for it but no update from Microsoft since 2017 that they're working on it.  Do you have an update for us on this issue?  Thanks!

 https://todo.uservoice.com/forums/597175-feature-suggestions/suggestions/19180219-task-entered-in-ou...

Copper Contributor

@Sascha Torkel @DoCode Just to note that the issue does not appear in Outlook.com but only in Outlook 365


Copper Contributor

Hello.

If I changed the due date on a flagged email on To-Do, if later I try to change the due date from Outlook, after a few seconds the flagged e-mail is changed back to the due date set in To-Do.

Is that normal?

Copper Contributor

I would appreciate an option to open flagged messages in Outlook Desktop rather than the Outlook Online.

Copper Contributor

I found that if you have existing flagged emails, you need to change the due to date to a minimum for tomorrow for the flagged emails to sync with To-Do.

Copper Contributor

Flagged emails do not sync unless all the above caveats are met. It seems that the "flagged email sync" feature is nearly useless... Odd that I have to rely on Apple to sync data from Exchange if I want to be productive.

Copper Contributor

@Polly Davidson - this is a great feature. BUT.... why cant we mark emails as complete in Outlook on Android?.. make sense for me to mark the emails as complete there, instead of going to a different app to then try to do the same thing......... To me it seems as though they skipped a step! and shouldve done that feature first!

Copper Contributor

@Polly Davidson I have several email accounts and want to use one To Do list. Similar to Wunderlist, can I forward emails from one account directly to To Do without needing to forward it to email and then apply a flag?

Copper Contributor

There seems to be a little bug when using the To-Do pop-out sidebar thing on OWA email & calendar pages.  When viewing a task that was added from a flagged email and you click the "view email" icon any embedded images in the original email don't appear in the new popup window.

clipboard_image_0.png

 

If you do the same thing from the To-Do web-app window the images appear ok.

clipboard_image_2.png

 

Anyone else seeing this?

 

Martin

 

Copper Contributor

Any updates on allowing emails to open in the desktop Outlook app instead of a browser? This would be a great feature if that were fixed. Thanks.

Copper Contributor

@Polly Davidson 

All emails marked as important are automatically going to my ToDo List.
Even sent emails flagged important.

 

Copper Contributor

Is there a way to be alerted when there is an update to allow Mac users to use this feature through non-Microsoft accounts on Mac Mail such as Gmail?  I am a Wunderlist user and that was by far my most used feature. Is there a workaround for now, other than copy-paste?

Copper Contributor

My flagged emails are appearing several times in To Do; has anyone any idea how to fix this. I use an Outlook work up and To do is on Iphone?

Copper Contributor

I am using OWA / Office 365 Outlook and To-Do from the Microsoft Store. Nothing I flag in either show up as flagged email in To-do. I am using a corporate account. 

Copper Contributor

My flagged emails are appearing several times in To Do; has anyone any idea how to fix this. I use an Outlook work up and To do is on Iphone?

Copper Contributor

I think that it does not work for Outlook (Exchange mail)

Copper Contributor
...It's time to get to work ticking off that list. Click on the flagged email task and you'll find a preview of the email and a button to take you to the Outlook website, or your mobile app, where you can see the full email and reply to it.

Why can't we choose to open the email task in Outlook desktop? This seems like a serious flaw. Am I missing something here? Is there a way to do it that I don't know about? Or that these people don't know about?

Copper Contributor

Is it also possible to use more mailboxes

Copper Contributor

The problem with this is that once you enable it, every email you flag becomes a task whether that was your intention or not (sometimes we flag emails for later reference). We need to be able to either push a button or right click on an email and create a "to-do" item. It should autofill the feilds based on the email content (including embedding the attachments) and provide a suggested reminder & due dates/times that are editable in the to-do item.

Copper Contributor

I find this feature very useful - I flag emails that I need to do some more work on at a later date and add a note as to what that work is. However, the search function in Todo does not appear to pick up anything in either the flagged email text or the note attached to it.

 

Is there a reason for this?

Copper Contributor

I have flagged an email & it appears on my To Do list.  Is it possible to add a new flagged email to that same Task?  Example, a f/u email or an email with additional information

 

I am trying to keep all of the emails organized under the same task, but cannot figure out how.  Thanks!

Copper Contributor

Has anyone gotten this feature to work with the ToDo app in Teams? I have my flagged emails in the Outlook and web versions of ToDo, but they are not visible in Teams.

Copper Contributor

Any updates on allowing emails to open in the desktop Outlook app instead of a browser? This would be a great feature if that were fixed.  This was a post from 2019.  It's 2023- is this still an issue?  My flagged emails open in To Do on my cell (Android).  They don't open on my desktop, is there something I can do to fix this?

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‎May 07 2019 06:25 AM
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