To-Do's To Do & Outlook's To-Do List

[Michael Brossart]

It's very confusing and annoying that Outlook's To-Do List does not sync with the new MS To-Do app.  I find it very handy to flag my emails in Outlook for later action.  Since these flagged emails don't end up in the Tasks folder, they aren't automatically synced with the To-Do app.  For me, this makes the To-Do app incomplete and unusable.

[#2 · Accepted solution]

While I agree with your request, if you modify your workflow a bit you can get this - I drag emails to the navigation pane and release over the "Tasks" link. That will create a new task with the email contents attached. This has served me better than simply flagging an email.

[#3]

Thanks for the tip.  It works great.  It has the added benefit of giving me even more control over the task than I do over the flag.

[#4]

The tip Brandon gave us works fine with Outlook Client on Windows. That's what I'm going to do from now. Thank you.  However, I flag a lot with my android phone for later consideration. While this operation is reflected into the Windows Outlook, it doesn't update the "to do" list online. It is surprising to see how far MSFT has pushed the task management into Outlook Windows whereas it is just starting to worry about including the feature into other services (the "Tasks" function online is basic and not user friendly). The integration into Android Outlook is still missing besides flaging the mails. Overall, it is going in the right direction so let's wait ...  

[#5]

I have same issue with both Android and IOS.

Outlook Team have add-in for Outlook IOS and Android.

Trello has add-in, when will MS To Do get add-in for Outlook Mobile?

[#6]

Hi Michael,

While actual tasks in Outlook's "Tasks" list do sync to To-Do, flagged emails do not currently because they are not task entities in Exchange and rather emails with an added property. 

While Brandon's suggestion is a great tip (thank you!) I'm happy to report that we're working on officially supporting flagged emails in Microsoft To-Do (web, desktop, and mobile) in the future. 

Best wishes,

Timo

[#7]

Hi @Timo Yates,

Any update on a planned release date for this functionality?

[#8]

A couple of items which I've found help quickly turn emails into tasks in MS To-Do are the use of the "Quick Steps" in outlook where you can set up a button to transform any email into a task. This is then available on the main outlook page and also when looking at any given email. 

Secondly, you can easily use Microsoft Flow and easily create a flow that transforms any email that is flagged into a task. This then works in Outlook or Outlook online or also the mobile app when flagging emails, I tested them all. 

Works well for me. Hope this helps.

[#9]

That's something I will try. thank you.

[#10]

The flow works perfectly but in the mobile app if the email is organized by thread, it flags all the email in that thread and multiple tasks are created. Any thoughts on how to deal with that? 

[#11]

it works sort of, the email formatting sucks

[#12]

Maybe I'm totally flipping but the flag "to do" to the "To Do" app did work on my office 365.

Now it seems to have disappeared. So what everybody is saying is that this functionality doesn't exist?

[#13]

Is that when you flag the latest email in the thread or an email part way through the thread? Apologies, when I tested that for me it seemed to work and I didn't get the duplicates so I'm not too sure.

[#14]

I am using the outlook app and I could not find out a way to flag just 1 email. The only option I get is to select the thread > from the ellipses choose 'Flag' and that flags every email in that thread.

[#15]

Any progress on this? Thank you!!

[#16]

Sorry for the delay! We're actually working on this right now. It will be more seamless and avoid a lot of the issues you see with approaches like the Flow above. I don't have an ETA but it's in development and prioritized high on the roadmap. Thanks!

Timo

[#17]

Great to hear, looking forward to this feature as getting tasks and flagged emails into the same Microsoft To Do 'Bucket' will propel a lot of Getting-Things-Done (GTD) practitioners towards the app.

Ergo, fantastic to have all you need to deal with....in one app!

M.

[#18]

Hey Timo, anywhere you can point to the MS To Do Roadmap?

M.

[#19]

I totally agree.  The vast majority of my tasks/to dos in Outlook originate from flagged emails so to not have these syncing just seems like a fundamental undermining of the app functionality.  For me (and it appears many others), this renders the app useless and as is why I continue to use TaskTask who appear to have worked out how to do it.  I do despair of Microsoft sometimes - so often they seem to miss the most obvious of targets and push their customers away.  Don’t get me started on the lack of sorting by date in OneNote!!!

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@Michael Brossart wrote:

It's very confusing and annoying that Outlook's To-Do List does not sync with the new MS To-Do app.  I find it very handy to flag my emails in Outlook for later action.  Since these flagged emails don't end up in the Tasks folder, they aren't automatically synced with the To-Do app.  For me, this makes the To-Do app incomplete and unusable.

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[#20]

Bump... When this feature will be released?