Creating Outlook Tasks in OneNote

Sandra Mahan showed me a really cool trick in OneNote this week, and it’s something that I’ll be using all the time now.

I rely on Outlook Tasks to remind me when things need to get done. I also store information in OneNote that sometimes has an action associated with it. I can use the To Do tag in OneNote, but I have never quite gotten into the habit of monitoring those on a consistent basis.

Sandra showed me the Outlook Tasks tag the other day, and now I can create follow-up actions in OneNote, and I can then track them automatically in my Outlook Tasks area.

First, place your cursor in front of the line which has the task you want to put into Outlook. Then select Home > Outlook Tasks:

When you click the dropdown arrow on Outlook Tasks, you’ll see a number of options to prepopulate due dates. If none of those work, you can select Custom and the Outlook Task will pop up in Outlook so that you can fill in the appropriate details:

Once you’ve created the task, you’ll see an Outlook Task flag icon at the front of the task in OneNote:

And if you go over to Outlook, you’ll see the task out there mixed in with all your other tasks:

If you look at the last two OneNote Outlook Tasks menu items, you’ll see you can also delete the Outlook Task from OneNote, as well as opening the task in Outlook so you can add notes or modify it.