Don't Delete: Mark it Complete

I have heard of a few instances where people love the To-Do Bar, but can't figure out how to get tasks off of it. So here is a little explanation.

Because the To-Do Bar is a collection of tasks, flagged mail and flagged contacts, when you delete a flagged mail in the To-Do Bar, you are deleting the actual mail, not just some associated task. The upside of this means that there isn’t an extra version of this task eating up your mailbox quota – there is only one item represented in multiple places (To-Do Bar, Daily Task List, and in your mail file system.) In case you did not want to delete the actual mail, we provided a PONT (point of need training dialog) to warn you:

So now you're stuck, right? NO! Mark it complete! Only active (non-complete) tasks show up in your To-Do Bar. You can mark any task complete in the following ways:

1. Click on the flag

2. Right click on the flag, and select “Mark Complete”

3. Right click on the mail itself, select “Follow Up” then “Mark Complete”

4. In the open item, click on the flag in the ribbon and select “Mark Complete”

Marking a mail complete gets it out of the To-Do Bar, but you still have a record in the Daily Task List of when you completed it. The mail is still in your file/reference system, so next time you come across the mail, you see by the check mark that you took some action on it and it is done. You can just keep it for reference. Of course, if you don’t need it for reference, then by all means, hit delete!

An alternative way to make the item disappear from your To-Do Bar, is to clear the flag. Clearing the flag removes the “taskiness” from the mail – it is as though you never flagged it or dragged it to the To-Do Bar. You can clear the flag in the following ways:

1. Right click on the flag, and select “Clear Flag”

2. Right click on the mail itself, select “Follow Up” then “Clear Flag”

3. In the open item, click on the flag in the ribbon and select “Clear Flag”

If you prefer to have a checkbox in your view instead of the flags, then you can customize your view in the following way:

1. In the To-Do Bar, click on “Arranged By:…” and select “Custom…”

2. Click on “Fields…”, and remove all but “Task Subject” and “Categories.”

3. Add “Complete” (which is a Task Field), move it to the top of the list, and then click Ok.

4. Next click on “Other Settings…”

5. Under “Other” unselect “Use compact layout…” then click Ok and then Ok again to get out of the dialog.

Viola! Checkboxes on the left side of your task view!

Bottom line: Mark it complete! Don’t delete.