Outlook client comes with various panels that you can use to make navigation more comfortable and customized according to your preference. Some of the panels can be seen by default such as Navigation pane, which allows you to go through Inbox, Sent Items, Drafts, and Deleted Items. However, there are other panels that can be used to make your work easier. One of such is People Pane, To-Do Bar.
In this post, we have listed the method to customize the To-Do Bar.
How To Activate the To-Do Bar?
You can’t see To-Do Bar when you first open Outlook. To locate it, you need to click View and it will expand all the options available. Under Layout, you can see Folder Pane, People Pane, Reading Pane and To-Do Bar or To Do Pane
After locating To-Do Bar. Click on it and you will get Calendar, Tasks, People and Off.
- Click Calendar, and you can see the current month along with your forthcoming appointments.
- Click People and view contacts that you have marked Favorites.
- Click Task and check the Outlook tasks sorted as per Due Date.
You can click to select any of these two or three to display.
You will be able to see them in the manner you can activate them from the To-Do Bar pane.
Also, you can make any of these disappear by locating the same under View, then To-Do Bar. Let’s say you don’t want People to be displayed from the window, go to View, then To-Do Bar and click People. It will disappear.
Also, you can add them later whenever needed.
If you want To-Do Bar components to disappear completely, then you can turn it off. Go to View, then click To-Do Bar, then from the list, click Off, or uncheck all options enabled.
How To Modify The To-Do Pane?
You can’t make changes to People and Calendar elements in the To-Do Bar. As they show the list of favourites and the forthcoming appointments respectively. Additionally, you can search your contacts under People.
Tasks elements, on the other hand, provides a room to customise. It just looks like an email folder, that’s why you can customize it similar to any other folder. The tasks are by default arranged as per Due Date in ascending order.
You can sort it by Today, by clicking the black downward arrow. You can also reverse the order by clicking on it again.
If you want more options for customisations, then right click on the header. You will get a context menu consisting of all the options.
The context menu will have All Mail, Unread Mail, Mentioned Mail, Arrange By, Reverse Sort, Show in Groups, and View Settings. You can click Arrange By and sort the list according to Categories, Start Date, Due Date, Folder, Type and Importance.
- You can select Categories if you want to arrange tasks alphabetically by category you have designated.
- You can select Start Date to arrange tasks according to the date on which started.
- You can select Due Date to arrange tasks according to the date on which they are supposed to be completed.
- You can choose the Folder option if you want to arrange by folder’s name. You can also create tasks in a folder.
- Want to arrange tasks by mails or tasks. You can also drag emails into tasks to add them to To Do List.
- You can arrange tasks as per the importance of the flag. It can be Low, Normal or High.
On the context menu, next comes Reverse Sort. The black arrow and Reverse Sort has the same functionality. You can either click the arrow or select Reverse Sort to change the preferences of tasks shown. With Show in Groups, you can see tasks in groups. It is enabled by default. If you want tasks in a list, then click Show in Groups to remove the checkmark beside it.
The last option on the context menu is View Settings. Upon clicking, you will get Advanced View Settings-To-Do-List. Here you can make changes to the Columns, Group By, Sort, Filter, Other Settings, Conditional Formatting, Format Columns and Reset Current View.
You can make changes to the task list by Columns, Group By, Sort, Filter, Other Settings, Conditional Formatting, Format Columns. In case you don’t like the changes, you can click Reset Current View to get the default settings back.
So, now that you know how to use and customize the To-Do Bar in Outlook. Create tasks, add appointments, and contact beside your emails and organize your work efficiently.
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