Sorting tasks by Due Date -- undated items are NOT overdue!

[Ken Wallewein]

When I sort tasks by Due Date, to see which items are most (or most nearly)
overdue and act accordingly, the sort sequence makes updated tasks appear
most overdue.

I'm puzzled why it would do so, because clearly if they aren't dated, they
can't be overdue, or even due soon. They should sort to the opposite end.

But mostly, I just want to change it. How do I make undated tasks sort by
date so that they appear due far in the future, not in the past.

By the way, I find evidence that people have been complaining about this
for at least seven years. The solution has to be trivial. Hel-loooooo?

/kenw
Ken Wallewein
K&M Systems Integration
Phone (403)274-7848
Fax (403)275-4535
(e-mail address removed)
www.kmsi.net

 

[DAVE]

Hi Ken,
Isn’t this more a philosophical than a technical question?
You can see a task without a due date from two points of
views.
1. This task I have to take care of whenever I have
time for it. No hurry.
2. This task has not even a due date and therefore has to
be done immediately. TODAY!
If you have a task without a due date and you sort your
task folder “by due date†what indication should Outlook use to sort?
He probably uses the second sense.
Why don’t you just give them a due-date for a year ahead and put them
to the end of the list?
You can also use a different colour to recognize them.

 

[Ken Wallewein]

Fair question. You're right, some people might want newly created tasks to
permanently appear "most urgent". Of course, if many tasks are most
urgent, it's kind of useless, and it buries tasks that really are overdue.

A couple of things come to mind:

1. Logically, if a task has no due date, it is never "due". When you
click on "Due Date", there are two buttons: "Today" and "None". If the
intended default is for tasks to be performed immediately, the default due
date should be "Today", don't you think?

2. What would be so hard about allowing us to either:
a) choose how undated tasks are sorted?
b) choose whether the default due date is "Today" or "None" (and switch
the default sort)?
c) have a way to set the default due date to, say, the year 9999?
d) have a third button/default option "Never"?

Any of those would make more sense than the current illogical and
non-functional situation that has been ignored for so long.

A side thought. One could crudely implement the urgency/importance matrix
as:
Due date: urgency
Priority: importance

/kenw