New features come to Microsoft To Do
Published May 05 2020 06:40 AM 101K Views
Microsoft

New features in To DoNew features in To Do

We’ve been a little quiet on the blog recently, because we’ve been hard at work delivering updates for you. We thought we’d take some time to let you know all that we’ve been up to. Let’s start with our brand-new smart lists rolling out this week. 

 

See all your tasks in one view 

One of your top-requested features is here - we now have both All and Completed smart lists. Head to your settings to turn them on. Once you do, you’ll notice that it’s not just one long list of tasks – instead, you can see them divided by list. If you’re only interested in your work-based tasks, you can close all the other sections to concentrate on your relevant lists.  

See all your tasks in one viewSee all your tasks in one view

Doing your performance review and want to see everything you accomplished recently? Head to the Completed smart list and you’ll have an overview of everything you’ve checked off, again divided by list. 

Planned list GIF optimized.gif

Updated Today and Week view 

One of our most exciting new updates is rolling out now, starting with Android this week and coming soon to other platforms. We’ll now give you a Today, Tomorrow, and Week view in your Planned list. Our lives are complicated. We have work, home, that side project, and much, much more. It’s not always useful to see one long list of tasks, without any context. Now you can group by list, so you can see everything due today from each different list. If you don’t want to see your home tasks while you’re at work, then you can close that section, and reopen it when you get back home. We hope you love the new look as much as we do. 

 

See your notifications on the iOS app badge 

If you like to have that little red number on your app icon to remind you that there’s a task to accomplish, then you’ll be happy to learn that we now have three options for the app badge – tasks that have been added to My Day and not completed, all tasks that are due and overdue, and turned off for those who prefer not to be reminded. 

 

Print your lists 

From this week, printing is now available on all platforms. So, if you prefer taking a paper list to the grocery store or keeping a physical copy next to you while you work, now you can. Want to email a copy to someone? Save it as a PDF and add it as an attachment. You can print a list by clicking on the three dots next to the list’s name and selecting Print list. 

You can now add tasks to the topYou can now add tasks to the top

Change how you add your tasks 

Our original idea with To Do was to replicate pen and paper, where you keep adding new ideas to the bottom of the list. We heard from some of you that this was frustrating when you had a long list and that you wanted the option to have your new items appear at the top. Now you can decide which option suits you best. Head over to settings, where you can decide whether you want to add a new task to the top or to the bottom of your list – and whether you want starred tasks to stay where they are or move to the top. 

 

See your completed tasks more easily 

Finally, we haven’t just given you a Completed smart list, we’ve also made it a lot easier to look at your completed tasks within your lists. You told us that you didn’t like to see your completed and uncompleted tasks mixed together and that hiding them took too many steps. We listened, and now you’ll find all your completed tasks at the bottom. So, if you like to mark your checked-off grocery items as incomplete for your next shopping trip, it’s now a lot easier to access them.  

 

That’s it from us, thanks for all the feedback. We really appreciate you taking the time to let us know what you’d like to see from To Do. We can’t wait to hear what you think of the latest updates in the comments below or over on Twitter and Facebook 

80 Comments
Brass Contributor

Now please

1. let us attach images like covers to a task.

2. When I copy paste  multiple lines into a subtask create a new subtask for each line,  this behavior should be in all platforms - web and windows app and mobile.

3. Chrome extension to add tasks to Microsoft Todo

4. Organize My day by context folders and have some tasks pinned to myday everyday instead of re adding it each day again and organize it yet again.

5. When I search for a tag, show tasks grouped by list and show completed separate not mixed in.

Brass Contributor

Please natural language and an integration with the Outlook calendar this is important now to get to the feet of other task apps. I loved Wunderlist and now I love Microsoft ToDo.

Copper Contributor

Thanks for the work behind the scenes on the latest update.  Do you think it will be possible for tasks from MS Planner to move to other lists in MS To Do?

Copper Contributor

Thanks for the update!

Brass Contributor

Not a bad change, but I miss the ability to sort those completed items alphabetically. I use one list as a "shopping list" so I can easily untick items I'll buy again. Now they're all over the place in the "Completed" section with no ability to sort.  I remember Wunderlist behaving this way and hating it there as well.  This makes the app a lot harder to use for a simple purpose.  Re-adding items just means I get multiples and kind of defeats that purpose.

 

Please bring back the ability to sort Completed items.

Steel Contributor

chrome extension for Microsoft todo

Silver Contributor

What about the web version? I see some of updates coming to it, like grouping of Completed tasks in Today view or new task at the top. But for a few months there is some bug it seems that steps are showing truncated when you first switch to another view and click on a task. Always have to click on some other task and then back to get the full text of steps. Also, was able to copy links out of steps at some point, but now it either copies one word or whole step. Have to create separate steps just for the links to be able to easily copy them (were they even clickable at some point?). Web version seems to be going backwards. Chrome.

 

Will have to check that Completed view and i hope the sorting is right. Now i just go to All tasks, enable completed, sort by date completed and tasks are all over the place. Like it shows completed: today, yesterday, week ago, today, weeks ago.

Copper Contributor

First of all, thanks for the update! There are some really nice things there.

Though I have two remarks:

1- Latest change where you moved the completed tasks to always be separated also broke sorting the completed tasks. Now it acts like the old Wunderlist. So for example if I want to un-check just a few specific shopping list items from a long list, it's very hard to find them.
This was actually one of the best improvements in To-do and now it's gone.
 
2- I think it might be a powerful thing to be able to quickly add tasks to the "My Day" list from the new smart lists. For example if I'm browsing the planned or the all list a small + icon on each task to add it to the my day view can really help
Brass Contributor

I want to switch between my Work account and my private Account as in OneDrive. 

Silver Contributor

Just tried these new All and Completed lists and they are not very useful for me because they group Flagged emails, and task by lists/groups. So to see all recently completed task i have to jump between these grouped lists. Same with All. I guess i will continue using just Tasks, enabling completed there and sorting by completed.

Silver Contributor

Also, why All using red color? Red is for emails only. This is confusing.

Copper Contributor

Thanks for the updates. 

Can you please add email reminders, wunderlist had it, and it was an integral part of my day. 

Copper Contributor

Nice updates, they will be useful.

The ability to share your tasks as view only with your manager so he/she can keep up to date on the progress of tasks of their team members. It will limit the manager having to ask for a status report. The manager may not be  a member of all the "Teams" or Planner plans that all of his/her staff are in.

Copper Contributor

I still miss the multiple device push message sync. Wunderlist as well as foreign tips like Todoist can do this without problems.
What I mean exactly. If I use Microsoft ToDo on several devices and I have a recurring appointment, then I get a push message on several devices Android. If I finished this, then it should disappear on the other devices as well. But this does not happen with Microsoft ToDo. Which leads to it, if I mark the push message as done on device B as well. So I have done the recurring appointment twice. This leads to the fact that the todo only pops up again after 2 incoming events

Copper Contributor

It would be ideal to add a chat to discuss the issue.
And also so that the task can be assigned to several people.

Silver Contributor

Disabling move of starred task to top is not doing anything on web, they are still stacked on top.

EDIT: had to disable sorting by importance

Brass Contributor

Totally agree with @Peter Schott . This latest change is a retrograde step in that I like to be able to hold, say, a groceries list showing all items (300 or so in my case) where I can turn the items on and off for shopping but to do that effectively the list must be alphabetical. It was fabulous until last night when your latest "upgrade" has sent it back into the dark ages. I have the old version on another phone but no doubt it will be "upgraded" whether I want it or not.

 

@Polly Davidson please tell me how I can go back to what worked really well!! Perhaps you should develop such that you can order the completed item list as well as being able to order the live list...............................Or at least show us how to reorder the completed tasks alphabetically.

 

Yes, completely messed up a great list.........as currently designed I cannot use it so I am off to find a suitable list that works elsewhere as a pick list. Microsoft does it again......5 steps forward but always 6 back!

 

Iron Contributor

@jsjogren you can already switch between your work and home accounts? (in both the Windows 10 Desktop and Android apps, at least)

Annotation 2020-05-07 220112.png

Brass Contributor

@kirashi Not in the iPhone app. 

Copper Contributor

As this user perfectly stated:

"Latest change where you moved the completed tasks to always be separated also broke sorting the completed tasks. Now it acts like the old Wunderlist. So for example, if I want to un-check just a few specific shopping list items from a long list, it's very hard to find them.

This was actually one of the best improvements in To-do and now it's gone. "
 
I'm also very disappointed I now can't sort the completed items.  I find it hard to believe this was not considered prior to the update, and I would think more than a few users have TO DO grocery lists. 
 
My grocery list has over 100 completed items that I uncheck as those items are needed and now I'm searching/scanning for them.  If I had a single list instead of one each for Walmart, Kroger, and Costco, it would be extremely long and totally unmanageable without the ability to sort completed items. 
 
Since I assume there is no going back to the undivided list, please add a sort functionality to the completed list.
 
Thanks!
Brass Contributor

Please bring back the ability to alphabetize completed items.

Copper Contributor

Hi - thanks for the update.

i realise a lot of people requested that completed items be in a separate list at the bottom, but i preferred to see them intermingled with outstanding tasks as it gave me a sense of achievement seeing my list fill up with completed tasks.

Perhaps you could have an option to toggle this feature on/off?

Copper Contributor

As many others have already stated: 

 

Completed section needs to be sortable, along with the option to view complete and incomplete tasks in a single sorted list. 

 

Without these abilities I'm better off going back to pen and paper for lengthy shopping lists.  

Copper Contributor

Please add an option so we can have the uncompleted and completed tasks mixed and ordered, as before the last update. To prepare a shopping lists based on my long list of groceries it is unpractical to have the complete tasks not ordered alphabetically and separated form the uncompleted ones. To Do List developers should have tried to do that before releasing this update. What seems a good things might indeed not be that good.

For those who don't like to see the completed tasks mixed with the ones still to be done, just hide them.

Thank a lot for your support.

Brass Contributor

@Polly Davidson I do hope you are hearing these observations and return the functionality that we are requesting ie the facility to alphabetically sort completed tasks. In the meantime I am saddened to say that I have found another app (Out of Milk) that has this functionality so I now have to run two apps; yours for work and theirs for shopping. I would much prefer to use yours.....it is up to you to fix it now, please.

Copper Contributor

Nooooo... Making the jump from Wunderlist, the ability to keep completed tasks in order was fantastic.  It’s now gone  :confounded_face:

 

I had my grocery list in the order that things are on the shelves in my local grocery store and it was then easy to uncheck the completed tasks.  I’m gutted that this upgrade to Wunderlist has regressed!

Copper Contributor

It was nice while it lasted.  Historically, micro$oft does not listen to its customers.  Unless a feature is something that one of the developers or product managers use, Microsoft will remove it as soon as it becomes even slightly difficult to maintain.  All the user feedback in the world is not going to change the software back.  For all the people requesting Microsoft to return the sort completed items functionality, I recommend finding a different piece of software to use that has the feature.  The chance that Microsoft brings it back it so slim as to be nonexistent.

Microsoft

@billyb3 Thanks for your input. Sorting on completed items is actually coming back on Android in the next update and will be rolled out to the other platforms in the future too. We have been listening to everyone's feedback. 

Brass Contributor

@Polly DavidsonThanks for hearing us on the completed items. I'll have to admit that I was not too hopeful that we'd be heard on that one. I used Wunderlist and that was a major missing feature for me with that app back then. I think it finally made the backlog and then the product was essentially killed.  I saw the changelog for Android today and look forward to it hitting the Windows app soon.  I'll often keep the lists in sync between PC and phone and tracking down the items I want to put back on my list has been much harder with the recent change on Windows. :\

 

I echo the thoughts on the reminders that get flagged for Cortana on multiple devices for a recurring task. If I complete it on phone, it ticks a completion. If I complete it on PC, it increments it again, and if I then do it on my tablet as well, I've now incremented my task 3 times rather than just marking it done once.

Brass Contributor

@Polly Davidson thank you for responding to the alphabetical sort issue on completed items! That's a deal breaker for me :)

Brass Contributor

@Polly Davidson There is a god after all.......many thanks! Any idea when the next update is scheduled for release so I can dump my other list app?

Silver Contributor

@Polly Davidsoni don't know how else to draw attention, but for a few months there is a bug in web version that truncates text in steps when you change a view (say to My day from Tasks) and i have to click on some other task and back to get full text in steps. I saw maybe 20 updates for web version during that time (asking to refresh tab). But this annoying bug is not being addressed.

Copper Contributor

***Need to be able to toggle back forth between accounts on IPhone app. You can't do that currently. Reason I wont use this app for all my needs. 

 

Is there an integration to Microsoft Teams? A tab dedicated to a shared to do lists with in a 'team' or 'chat' on Microsoft Teams. 

 

Integration to Microsoft Projects? Tab dedicated to Microsoft Projects within a team or chat? 

Copper Contributor

Wishes:

1. Smart list for undated tasks from all lists. I have a lot of tasks with no date and I want to be able to see them in one place, preferably also with the possibility to sort them in different priority groups. 

2. Tasks scheduled for today (and overdue) should automatically show up in "my day" (or at least have that option)

Silver Contributor

ColleenKoepke, they are promising integration for quite a while and i think currently it is slated for June or such. It will be called Tasks in Teams and will integrate tasks from both To Do and Planner into one window.

Copper Contributor

I came over from Wunderlist and really want TO DO to work like Wunderlist. Thank goodness we can print our lists now. I used to be able to email my list. Instructions say you can save list as a PDF and attach but I do now see where list can be saved as PDF. I really just want to copy list and put in body of email (like I used to in Wunderlist. 
work in progress I guess. I will keep monitoring the updates 

Silver Contributor

You can print into PDF if you install some virtual PDF printer like PDFCreator.

Copper Contributor

That is such a hassle. I’ll wait until ToDo can just email my list within the body of email like Wunderlist did. 

Copper Contributor

I have been using Wunderlist for a few years now. I recently installed Microsoft To Do on my laptop but cant find All and Completed smart lists. I did go to settings and try! Many of my tasks are undated. Can you please help?

 

However, I can find All & Completed Smart Lists on my iphone app!

 

17.05.20

The above got sorted out the very next day! I can see the 'All' list now.

 

Copper Contributor

Can you please make all these features available on Mac? 

Plus whenever making a new task on to do, I can't add the due date and reminder at one go. Only after I type the task and click the task, then it shows the other small window to allow more infos. Please please please make a bit better features for Mac. Thanks. 

Silver Contributor

Have noticed another quirk in web version, probably after some recent update. In My Day if you set a reminder or due date it hides the steps panel. So i now need to click more to set a due date and a reminder in one go. And just in general, i have a wide screen, i don't need it to hide, i want side panel to be always available. What is more weird, it only does that in My Day. In Tasks the side panel doesn't hide.

 

Outlook team treats their web version as a first class citizen and often new features get there first. In To Do this is opposite. Web version is clunky and buggy. Truncated steps text, not able to copy part of the text in steps (it starts to drag them), painful way of dragging and reordering steps and tasks.

Copper Contributor

After completing a software update, I can no longer view the "Today/Tomorrow/Week" categories under my Planned task list (all my tasks are just listed together). Can I change it back, or has this feature been removed? If so, this change deteriorates the usability of the app quite drastically.

Copper Contributor

I see that Categories are now supported on the web browser version of MS To Do. How soon see that in the Android app? Also, is there a way to have the Categories in the drop-down list sorted by default in Alpha A-Z? Right now it looks like creation order which is very hard to work with/sort through a large list of Categories. Thanks for the help on how to do this if it is presently possible -- or please add as a feature request for next revision. 

Copper Contributor

@Polly Davidson I just switched over from gTasks to Microsoft To Do on my iPhone and am disappointed in the layout. I have multiple lists with multiple items, with reminders at different times of the day (e.g. daily medication). I need to see my daily items separated by lists for the day and in order of reminder time, otherwise it's just a big mess to figure out what's due when. I was really hoping this would be an upgrade from gTask, but Microsoft To Do is not for tracking several items due at specific times during the day.

Copper Contributor

I want you to be able to chat for each task

Brass Contributor

Any update on when To Do will be integrated into Teams? I am giving my team a demo of Teams the 2nd week of June and it would be great if this was available.

Copper Contributor

Hi. Can you introduce the ability to do multi-level sort in our lists? For example, I'd like to sort by importance, followed by due date. Thanks!

Copper Contributor

The service has become terribly slow. Especially slow down the UWP version. The list of 600 + issues opens in half a minute. My guess is that this is not because of the 600+ tasks, but because of the huge number of completed tasks that were not displayed before and are now hanging at the bottom of the list.

Copper Contributor

Is there a way to have all your tasks due that day automatically show up in my day? So if I set several tasks to be due every Tuesday, then on Tuesday I'll automatically see those tasks repopulated, etc. Can this be done? 

 

Copper Contributor

It would also be nice to be able to copy tasks so as to keep a list of seed tasks with often used checklists. I'm using ToDo in Windows for work, Mac at home and IOS on my phone. None has that option.

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