Microsoft Outlook 2007 automatically adds a flagged email as a task to your To-Do Bar. This includes old email items (including archived) from Outlook 2003 when you upgrade. How do you get rid of these legacy flagged email tasks without deleting the original emails?
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If your workload management approach with Outlook 2003 included Outlook Task Management and email/task integration you can find that your legacy of imported flagged tasked emails makes it very difficult to operate effectively within the 2007 To-Do Bar. You cannot just delete flagged email Tasks because if you do you will delete the original emails and they might have some value to you!
Here’s what to do. It will only involve a little work (including reverting to your default To-Do bar view if you are currently using my suggested Outlook settings) to clear flags then reset the To-To Bar customisations according to your training manual.
A) First of all revert to original To-Do Bar settings:
- Right-click on any column heading in your To-Do Bar and select ‘Customise Current View’ and, at the bottom of the dialogue box, hit the ‘Reset current view’ button.
B) You can now clear these older flagged mail tasks in the To-Do Bar as follows:
- Right Click the Column title bar at the top of the task list in the To-Do Bar. Click on ‘Arrange by’ and select ‘’Type’ and also select ‘Show in Groups’
- If ‘Posts On Top’ is visible in the title bar’s right edge, click it to display ‘Messages On Top’.
- With the flagged messages grouped, use the Shift method to select a predetermined block or hold Ctrl and click the messages you want to clear.
- Right-click any flag in the selected block and choose Clear Flag/Delete Task.
C) If you use my Outlook To-do bar settings from our training, redo your basic customisations per your training manual.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Thank you for this, a quite annoying little feature/glitch. All cleared now.
I’m delighted that this has been helpful, Maria. Improving workload and priority management skills in the real world is often about leveraging technology. The great thing about driving some time-honoured principles of time management through better use of Outlook is that the improved Outlook usage helps us maintain the principles and best practice behaviours we already know are important! I have been fortunate enough to train people based in both Sofia and New York.
Richard, if I do this will I also be deleting the task?? I hate the darned flag but I don’t want my tasks to disappear with it…
Hi Laurel, this approach only removes the flag, you will NOT be deleting the email that the task flag was associated with.
Obviously if there is still work to do on any particular flagged emails you will need to make that work visible to yourself so that you can apply best practice priority management and result delivery to that particular mail.
Thanks for dropping by and I hope this helps.