This lets you turn a flagged email into an actionable task by adding a deadline, notes, steps, files and more. If you frequently flag emails for follow-up in Outlook they appear in the “Flagged email” smart list. The tasks that appear in the “Assigned to You” smart list are those that are pulling from assigned Outlook tasks, assignments from Planner, and tasks assigned to you in To Do. Items that appear in the Important smart list are tasks you deemed important by clicking on the star in the task. While you can see suggestions in My Day pulled from a variety of areas in Office 365 you can also look at them in Smart Lists. If you find that you have the same task come up repeatedly you can set it to repeat daily, weekly, monthly, yearly or a custom series. However, in any section (My Day or Smart Lists) click on the ellipses and choose to “Show Completed Tasks”. When you mark a task complete the default is to remove the task from your list. To mark a task as important, click the star to the right of the task. Just click the ellipses at the top right and choose “Sort by”. You can sort tasks in My Day or in Smart lists by Importance, Due Date, Completed, Alphabetically or by Creation Date. Similarly, if the task originated in Planner you can open the task in Planner from the side panel. It will also let you open the original email in Outlook. If the suggested task is from a flagged Outlook email click on the task and the side panel that opens will let you add steps, reminders, due dates, files, and notes.
Click the plus sign on the right to add the task to My Day. Items that will appear as suggestions include Outlook tasks, “Tasks assigned to me” from Planner, emails you have flagged for follow-up, tasks you created in OneNote and tasks in other To Do Lists you have created. Want to see what might need to be added to My Day? Get suggestions by clicking on the lightbulb in the top right. You can also add relevant files (up to 25 MB) and notes. You can then add a reminder, a due date, and whether this is a repeating task. For instance, if the task is “Update the Jones’ Estate Plan” you can add steps like “review medical directive”, “update trust pursuant to new rules”, “make sure client’s contact information is correct”, etc. You can add steps (sub-tasks) to your task. You can click on the star symbol to add the task to the “Important” Smart List. From that list, click on the task and a panel appears to the right. Once you have entered the text in the “Add a task” bar and hit enter the task you added appears in the My Day list. You can add a new task at the bottom of the screen. In Microsoft To-Do you start with “My Day”. Below that you can add your own tasks lists. These include pre-set lists like My Day and Smart Lists like “Assigned to You”, “Flagged email” and “Important”. To Do is oriented in the left navigation panel by lists. If you use flags for follow-up on MS Outlook emails, make sure that this feature is also toggled on in Connected Apps. Under Connected Apps if you or your office use Planner, or Planner through Teams, make sure that Planner is toggled on. You can turn these Smart Lists on and off at any time, you won’t really know if they are useful until you have used the product for a little while. Under Smart Lists, you can toggle on or off “Important” “Planned” and “Assigned to You”. Click on your username in the upper left corner and look under Settings.
Settingsįirst, you can make some choices about how To Do interacts with other Office 365 applications.
You can also download and install the To Do application for Windows or Mac, iOS or Android. You may have to click on “See More” if this is your first time using it. To get started, access To Do through your browser by going to, logging in and viewing the Office apps. To see all of your tasks in one place from across Office 365 or to help manage a remote workforce, you should check out Microsoft To Do. To Do has “Smart Lists” and suggestions based on tasks and flagged emails from other applications across Office 365, including OneNote, Planner, and Outlook. You can create tasks for yourself or assign them to your team. You can create tasks, with rich context including deadlines, reminders, sub-tasks, notes, and files. Like all of Office 365, it works in the browser and has apps for desktop and mobile devices. It is based on the Wunderlist platform, which Microsoft bought in June 2015. Microsoft To Do is a task management tool that comes with Office 365.