Outlook 2000 in a Nutshell

Chapter 9. Tasks

Tasks are the electronic equivalent of those to-do notes scattered all over your desk. Tasks are an excellent candidate for electronic organization because, like Outlook’s other components, they can be edited, sorted, organized, categorized, and quickly shuffled for priority when all your best laid plans take a turn for the worse.

The real power of Tasks, however, lies in their ability to leverage Outlook’s other components to delegate a task to another person. This assignment feature uses email to send a task to someone on your contact list. The task can then be accepted or rejected by the recipient, and on acceptance, automatically tracked until complete.

Tasks are similar to Calendar items in form and function with two subtle twists. Setting a date for a task is optional; under Calendar it is a necessity. In addition, Calendar activities typically occur at a specific time (with the exception of events), but Tasks have no equivalent time property. This gives rise to three distinct task categories:

1. Tasks with no assigned dates: your “when I get around to it” items.

2. Tasks with a due date: the dry cleaning that needs to be picked up on Monday.

3. Tasks that have both a start date and a due date: the manuscript you have to review that’s will be ready on Wednesday and needs to be complete by Friday.

Outlook does not support tasks with a start date and no due date; we can only speculate that Microsoft engineers wanted to ensure you finish everything added to your Task list. ...