How to customize the To-Do pane in Outlook

The Outlook application has a number of different panels that users can display and hide as they like. On Outlook, you will see a number of panels by default such as the Navigation pane, some uncommon pane like To-Do and People. This article will show you how to customize the To-Do pane.

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Activate To-Do Pane

By default, the To-Do pane is not displayed, so we need to click View> To-Do Bar to display it.

In the screenshot above, you can also see the Folder Pane, Reading Pane and People Pane options. Pane is part of a window that provides users with more information or quick access to features commonly used in a software program. Many people still can't explain why the To-Do pane is labeled 'To-Do Bar' because Microsoft itself calls it the pane in their document. So to be consistent, here we will call it pane.

The To-Do pane option

Click View> To-Do Bar will display four options: Calendar, People, Tasks and Off .

1. Calendar : Displays the current month and your upcoming appearances.

2. People : Display the contacts you marked as Favorites .

3. Tasks : Display Outlook tasks in order of due dates.

You can choose to display Calendar, People, Tasks items, combine two or three options if desired. They all appear in the To-Do pane on the right side of Outlook.

The items appear in the order you turn them on in the To-Do Bar option. The above image is arranged in the order that appears as Calendar, People, and Tasks, but you can change this order by clicking View> To-Do Bar> Calendar and then adding them so that it appears at the end. After Tasks.

If you don't want to display the To-Do pane, click View> To-Do Bar> Off or uncheck all other options.

Customize To-Do pane

With the Calendar and People options, we can't make any more customizations because they only show upcoming appointments and favorite contacts.

You can customize many things with Tasks. In fact, it works like a regular email folder, meaning you can customize it like any other folder. By default, your tasks are sorted by Due Date in ascending order.

If you click on the black arrow next to Today, this order will reverse, showing the newest to the oldest tasks.

Right-click anywhere on the title, you'll see a context menu of custom options.

The first three options All Mail, Unread Mail and Mentioned Mail are completely useless in Tasks. These options are standard mail filtering options in mail folders and have no effect in Tasks.

The Arrange By option allows you to sort by the default Due Date criteria.

Options include:

1. Categories : Sort tasks in alphabetical order according to the category you have specified.

2. Start Date : Arrange tasks by the date the task is started.

3. Due Date : Arrange tasks by the date they will be completed.

4. Folder : Arrange tasks by the name of the folder they are in (tasks can be created or moved to any folder in Outlook).

5. Type : Arrange tasks by how they are attached as messages or tasks (you can drag the email into Tasks to create a to-do item).

6. Importance : Arrange tasks by importance level: High , Normal or Low .

In the Arrange B y section, we also have the Reverse Sort option reversed, doing the same by clicking on the black arrow in the upper right corner. You can also select Show in Groups to display group tasks (default) and display them in a simple list.

Finally, you can use the View Settings option to open a custom folder window.

You can press the Reset Current View button to return to the default view.

To-Do pane is one of Outlook's most useful features, as it adds information about appointments, contacts and tasks right on the front page along with your email. Outlook is definitely a productivity app, not just the mail client and the To-Do pane is an integral part.

I wish you all success!