Tasks, Due dates & reminders

[Aidan Whitehall]

I have a task I need to do by midday next Tuesday. So, I open a new task (in
Outlook 2003) and type "Next Tuesday" in the Due Date field (which Outlook
parses correctly -- *nice* feature). But... damn, I can't specify midday.
That means that when the reminder pops up on Tuesday morning, it's going to
tell me it's "8 hours overdue" when in reality there are 4 hours left until
it's due.

And then I tab out the field and it's conveniently created a Reminder for
me. Set to 08:00 on Tuesday. I don't know about you but a reminder after
something's due (remember that Outlook thinks it's due at Tuesday 00:00)
isn't much use. If something has a deadline, I want to be reminded before
then, not after. So I change the reminder to "Next Monday", and Save and
Close.

These really are the only options I use with Tasks, and I find myself
repeatedly having to work around them, instead of them working the way I
want. Not having a time component in the Date Due field is frustrating. And
I've always got to manually change the reminder date to before the day
before it's due. Every time I create a new task.

Tools > Options > Task Options don't seem to offer a pretty limited set of
things to tweak.

Am I working against the grain here? Have I misunderstood how these things
should work? Thanks for any pointers.

 

[Jocelyn Fiorello [MVP - Outlook]]

I realize I'm not going to give you a true solution to this issue when I say
this, but instead of setting the task for the day before, why not just type
some kind of a due time into the subject line -- like "Finish Sales Report
(due at noon)"? Then even if you get a reminder at 8:00 AM that says the
task is 8 hours overdue, you'll know it's not.

Another possibility, if you're not using any of the more advanced task
features, is to create a calendar for your tasks and make them into timed
appointments instead (or just add them to your original calendar). If you do
create a secondary calendar you'll need a 3rd party program to add the
reminder functionality to it, as reminders in Outlook only work for items in
the default Inbox, Calendar, Tasks and Contacts folders in the default mail
store. You can find such programs at http://www.slovaktech.com.

--
Jocelyn Fiorello
MVP - Outlook

*** Messages sent to my e-mail address will NOT be answered -- please reply
only to the newsgroup to preserve the message thread. ***

 

[Aidan Whitehall]

I realize I'm not going to give you a true solution to this issue when I

say
this, but instead of setting the task for the day before, why not just
type
some kind of a due time into the subject line -- like "Finish Sales Report
(due at noon)"? Then even if you get a reminder at 8:00 AM that says the
task is 8 hours overdue, you'll know it's not.

Yeah, could do, I suppose.

Another possibility, if you're not using any of the more advanced task
features, is to create a calendar for your tasks and make them into timed
appointments instead (or just add them to your original calendar). If you
do
create a secondary calendar you'll need a 3rd party program to add the
reminder functionality to it, as reminders in Outlook only work for items
in
the default Inbox, Calendar, Tasks and Contacts folders in the default
mail
store. You can find such programs at http://www.slovaktech.com.

Interesting -- thanks.


I still want my time portion of Due Date, though ;-)

 

[Jocelyn Fiorello [MVP - Outlook]]

I can't say I blame you there

--
Jocelyn Fiorello
MVP - Outlook

*** Messages sent to my e-mail address will NOT be answered -- please reply
only to the newsgroup to preserve the message thread. ***