Do you have this option switched on in Outlook for Windows?

[John Forrister]

In Outlook for Windows, there is an option to switch on "Try it now" in the upper-right corner. When switched on, it adds a set of icons to the left side of the screen, including one that launches a built-in version of To Do. I am curious to learn whether you have the "Try it now" option switched on. Please feel free to answer as a reply, with as much detail as you choose, or just click one of the poll options. Thanks for anything you'd care to share.

 

[RomanS]

I do not like "beta-testing". Outlook is important in my daily work. That means, it must be always in a productive stage. And I do not like the built-in-version of To Do. For me, it feels smoother to work with the original To Do.

 

[Matth8346]

I do keep this option turned on. I manage the IT department at our organization so I can appreciate a heads up on new features before our users get hit with them. We are on the Microsoft 365 "current channel", so this update is in production for most of my users now.

As for the built in ToDo, I still prefer the standalone app. I just wish we could open 2 instances of the app which helps me during review time - have actions on one screen and projects on another. An easy workaround is using the web version for this purpose.

 

[Eric Wayte]

I work in IT and have this option turned on. I flag e-mails for later follow up where they go to "My Tasks" and I have a task to review these on a weekly basis.

 

[James_Harwood]

Hi John,

I have turned on the ‘new outlook’ feature - although I’ve been coaching people today from a large company and they don’t even have the option showing on their versions - assume their IT have blocked it.

A few things I am finding with Outlook and To Do - if this helps your own testing:

It certainly is a moving feast - one of my big problems with the functioning of To Do up until now, has been that when you have a link to an email, it always opened it in a new browser window, even if you had the desktop Outlook open. This is still the case if you use the standalone To Do desktop app or the web app, although now, just now, if you click on the email link in the Outlook To Do app, it opens in the Outlook Desktop app, even without internet connection - I’ve been trying it with my wifi turned off. This means that To Do can be used offline to Engage with your lists.

There is still an issue trying to Clarify and Organise offline with To Do though. For now, as Tasks is still there, you can make a Task offline, which will then appear in To Do, although ‘when’ Tasks are removed, as they surely will be, following the path taken with Mac Outlook, the only way to get an email into To Do inside the Outlook Desktop app, is to flag the email. This then is not a perfect solution at all: first it doesn’t appear for ages in To Do and seems to need an internet connection and the delay I am often seeing will make Clarifying and Organising take forever, or require rethinking and rereading of emails once they appear as flagged; 2 you can only flag one email into one To Do item - so you cannot, using the flagging into To Do option, create more than one To Do item (Next Actions or Projects - many of which may come from one email) - so nowhere near as GTD friendly as the old Tasks were; 3 if you flag an email to get it in To Do and then un-flag the email later, having created a To Do, it marks the To Do as complete and you lose it; 4 if you flag an email and then remove the flag, when you re-flag the email it doesn't go back into To Do - so you only have one chance to flag a To Do 'properly'.

The solution to this, if I had to use To Do now, would be to do all my Clarifying and Organising using the web version of Outlook with the ‘My Day’ tab on the right, dragging emails to the right to create as many To Dos as I need (Next Actions and Projects) and then Engaging with my lists in Outlook Desktop, which I could do offline. This would mean however that you cannot Clarify or Organise without stable internet - which would be impossible for me (and I’m sure many others) as I spend an average of two work-hours a day on a train with poor internet.

Let’s hope it gets better quickly!

Hope that helps - and great we can help each other with these changes.

 

[RomanS]

... 4 If you flag an e-mail in Outlook or a task in OneNote for To Do and you move the task in another list of To Do, the link between To Do and Outlook/OneNote gets broken. That's why I never flag. I always make a new task in To Do.

 

[grahamen]

I did try it and then turned if off again, as I have multiple accounts in my outlook and it only wanted to pick up the MS Exchange account in the preview, so useless to me

 

[Matt_M]

Not only did I not turn it on, I permanently disabled the functionality through editing the registry (and I continue to fight Outlook and Microsoft's intrusive ideas). I have customized every inch of Outlook and it frustrates to no end when Microsoft tries to shoe-horn in things nobody asked for or needs. I despise rearranging GUI elements for the sake of rearranging GUI elements. Anyways, I am not going to go on a rant but suffice it to say that "Nope, it is permanently in an off position". This is probably why I have MacBooks for my personal machines.

Regarding beta-testing software, I am not opposed to helping out a company getting some UAT (i.e. user acceptance testing) done through regular users however my two biggest objections are as follows. First, real customers have real work and data to manage so they need reliability and stability in their software. Second, companies should hire QA folks for that kind of work and pay them versus having expecting paying customers to do it for free. I would much rather someone get a QA job testing the software than me spending my time doing it for free with my real data.

 

[John Forrister]

Not only did I not turn it on, I permanently disabled the functionality through editing the registry (and I continue to fight Outlook and Microsoft's intrusive ideas). I have customized every inch of Outlook and it frustrates to no end when Microsoft tries to shoe-horn in things nobody asked for or needs. I despise rearranging GUI elements for the sake of rearranging GUI elements. Anyways, I am not going to go on a rant but suffice it to say that "Nope, it is permanently in an off position". This is probably why I have MacBooks for my personal machines.

Regarding beta-testing software, I am not opposed to helping out a company getting some UAT (i.e. user acceptance testing) done through regular users however my two biggest objections are as follows. First, real customers have real work and data to manage so they need reliability and stability in their software. Second, companies should hire QA folks for that kind of work and pay them versus having expecting paying customers to do it for free. I would much rather someone get a QA job testing the software than me spending my time doing it for free with my real data.

I'm impressed that you edited the registry. I've worked in QA testing. One of the bugs I'm proudest to have found involved a registry key that Outlook created only after the categories were opened. Even though the categories were they, they were not accessible to software that called them via a registry key until the user opened and closed the list of categories.

 

[Rotterdam_Guy]

Hi John,

I'm using the "old" tasks option in Outlook. Works fine for me (only using it for my "waiting for" and some support mails for projects) since my projects are in Omnifocus. Unfortunately, I'm stuck to Windows for my work machine.

 

[KMT]

Hi all, my outlook just got auto updated and although the to-do is integrated, the tasks are still there and the quick steps are working with ctrl-shift-v. screen shot below of what it looks like.

 

[apastuszak]

Does this give me the new Microsoft ToDo experience inside of Outlook?

My company has made the boneheaded move to roll out the ToDo app on our phones, but on our PCs, we have to use the Todos in Outlook. Well, one day I sat on my iPad and entered a ton of tasks. I made each project a task and then I created subtasks for all the tasks in that project.

Next morning, in Outlook all I see are the top-level tasks, because Outlook does not support subtasks.

My biggest beef with Microsoft ToDo is that I can't make smart lists based on tags. This seems like pretty basic functionality.