Tasks and To-Do’s

A Task is a particular type of Outlook item used to track something that must be done. Tasks are designed for tracking and managing things you need to do. You can assign a Task start and end dates, set a recurrence pattern, track its status, give it a priority, record additional details in defined fields, send status reports, even assign the Task to another person.

To-Do’s are new to Outlook 2007. A To-Do is an Outlook item that has been marked as requiring some sort of action in the future. To-Do’s don’t automatically have the special abilities of Tasks. They don’t have start and end dates, recurrence patterns, and so on. All they are is items that are marked as requiring some sort of action in the future.  To-Do’s are not particular types of Outlook items. An email message can be a To-Do. A Contact item can be a To-Do.  To make things totally confusing, Tasks are always To-Do’s since by definition, Tasks require some sort of action in the future – but a To-Do isn’t always a Task.