Use Windows Live to handle tasks on a Windows Phone
There is no task application on Windows Phone 7 and so there's no way to sync tasks from Outlook to WP7. Windows Live includes a task option that is buried within the Calendar, but it is very limited and it doesn't sync either.
I recently published an article that documents one method you could use to handle your tasks on a windows phone, which you can read here. At the time I also mentioned another method that I was formulating. This method is more complicated to set up, but is free and integrates nicely with Outlook and the phone's calendar.
I've figured out a way to use Windows Live and Outlook to manage tasks.
Setup Windows Live to accommodate your Tasks
Create a new Windows Live account that is different from your primary Windows Live account.
Login to your new Windows Live account, select Hotmail > Calendar
Select Share > My Calendar > select Share My Calendar and place a checkmark in the box next to "Share your calendar privately with friends and family" > select the "Add people" button
Input the email address for your primary Windows Live account in the "Enter a name or email address" space, then select the down arrow underneath "Choose how much these people can see and do" and select "Co-owner." Select the Add button and scroll down to the bottom of the page and select "Save"."
Select OK to send an email to your primary Live ID account to complete the set up, then log-in to your primary Windows Live account and select Hotmail. Open up the email that was just sent from your other Windows Live account and select the Orange "Accept" button in the upper right hand corner of the email.
Select Hotmail > Calendar. Now you should see a new calendar button in the left hand control panel called "My Calendar". Click on the new calendar and rename it to "My Tasks." Now you can view, modify and delete items from the new Windows Live calendar.
Move Outlook tasks to your new Windows Live Calendar
To gain access and sync to your new Windows Live Calendar, you should have already set up the Outlook Hotmail Connector to sync your primary Windows Live account information with Outlook. If you've already set up the Connector, when you open up Outlook and select Calendar, you should now see the new Windows Live Calendar in the left hand control panel.
In the screenshot below, the Windows Live Calendar I'm using for my appointments is labeled "Julie's Calendar" and the Windows Live Calendar I'm using for tasks is labeled "Julie's Tasks" (you can click the screenshot to see a larger version of it).
Right now your Windows Live Tasks Calendar is empty. You could start manually inputting tasks to it, but you can also export the tasks that are stored in your Personal folder to a CSV file and then import the CSV file into your new Windows Live Tasks Calendar.
Export your Outlook tasks to a CSV file: Select File > Import and Export > Export to a file > Next > Comma Separated Values (DOS) > Next > select Tasks (This computer only) > Next > select the Browse button and navigate to the folder and create a file name for the file > OK > Next > Finish > Change date range to accommodate all your Tasks > OK.
Before you import the CSV file into your new Windows Live Calendar, open up the file in Excel and edit the file as follows:
- Input a date in the Start Date. This field must have a date in it or else the record will not import into your Windows Live Tasks Calendar
- For tasks with Due Dates: I copied the Due Date to the Start Date field (or you could map the Due Date to the Start Date field when you import the file into your new Windows Live Tasks Calendar)
- For undated tasks: If you want to track these tasks on your phone, you'll have to input a date in the Start Date field.
- Input a date in the End Date. If you don't input a date in the End Date field, Outlook will treat the task as an all day event with a start time of 12:00 AM on the Start Date and an end time of 12:00 AM the next day. (See the screen shot below)
- Add Start Time & End Time columns and input a time in them. If desired, you can add start time and end time columns in your CSV file and input whatever time you desire for each task or you can import the tasks into your Windows Live Tasks Calendar and then move them around on your calendar in Outlook.
Import the Tasks CSV file into your new Windows Live Tasks Calendar: Select File > Import and Export > Import from another program or file > Next > Comma Separated Variable (DOS) > Next > select the Browse button and navigate to the folder where the CSV file is stored > Ok > Next > select your new Windows Live Tasks Calendar > Next > you can select the Map Custom Fields to make sure the fields in your CSV file are mapping to the right fields in the Windows Live Tasks Calendar
Then select Ok > Finish. Your tasks have now been imported into your new Windows Live Tasks Calendar. Finally press the F9 button to synchronize the tasks to your online Windows Live account.
Create some Outlook Views to Handle Tasks
Now that your tasks are stored in the new Windows Live Tasks Calendar, you can create some views to help you work with tasks as if they were still stored in your Tasks folder. I replicated some views that parallel the views I've used to work with tasks for several years, which include the following fields: Icon, Attachment, Importance, Subject, Complete, Status, Start, End, Duration, Categories, Created, Flag Status. I've created three different views that show these fields, and included the following advanced filters:
- Active Tasks:
- Start: in the next 7 days
- Flag Status: equals UNFLAGGED
- All Open Tasks
- Flag Status: equals UNFLAGGED
- Completed Tasks
- Flag Status: equals COMPLETED
You can view your Windows Live Tasks Calendar and your main Windows Live Appointments Calendar individually and you can also overlay the Tasks Calendar with your main Appointments Calendar in the Day/Week/Month views by placing or removing checkmarks in the boxes next to each Calendar in the left hand control panel. If you go back and review the screenshot of my weekly calendar which appears earlier in this article, you'll see an example of this.
Now you are ready to set up your windows phone to synchronize to your Windows Live Tasks Calendar.
Synchronize the Tasks Calendar to your Windows Phone
One really nice feature that windows phone 7 offers is the ability to sync multiple calendars to the phone. Once the calendar data is on the phone, you can display each calendar's entries in a different color on the phone's master calendar and you can toggle the calendar displays on and off.
To synchronize the new Windows Live Tasks Calendar to the phone, go to Settings > email & accounts > add an account > Windows Live > input your Windows Live Id and Password for your second Windows Live account. Then all the data that is stored on that account will synchronize to the phone (you can modify this account later to change the account name, set the sync times, etc to your preferences).
To change the color for the calendar display or to turn the calendar on and off, open up the Calendar on the phone, tap the three dots in the bottom right hand side of the screen. Then select "calendars" to change the color of the calendar items and to turn the calendar display on and off.
Final Notes
It took some time to get used to seeing my tasks included in with my calendar items, but now that I've become accustomed to it, I really like it. I also like the idea of scheduling blocks of time in my calendar to work on tasks. I may not get the satisfaction of checking off my tasks on my phone, but I can do that in Outlook and I'm finding it very useful to organize my week in Outlook's weekly view, where I can move tasks around and schedule my tasks. All-in-all, I think this method will actually make me more effective and more focused on getting things done.
Try this method out and let me know what you think of it.
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So, what this strategy basically does is convert all tasks to appointments, and put those in a seperate calendar, right?
That means you lose the ability to check them off, but it also has implications for repeating tasks; repeating tasks are created all at once, instead of only having the current one visible (the next one is normally only created after checking off the current one).
It's a nice, and free workaround, but it does require a different look at the meaning of tasks.
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Yes, a second calendar is used to store your tasks. You won't be able to check them off on the phone (which I know is a supremely satisfying thing to do), but if you set up a calendar view on your computer that looks just like a tasks view, you can include the checkmark box there and check off tasks as you complete them.
I've never used the "repeating tasks" option - I found that to be somewhat problematical in the past, and so for those kinds of tasks, instead of marking them completed, I just change their date when I complete them to the next date (I do this a lot to remind me to call some of my relatives).
When I first started exploring this method, I was a little disoriented by seeing my tasks interspersed into my calendar, but I've played around with it some and actually think I'll enjoy having everything displayed in my schedule like that. I'm placing the little tasks (that are more like "to dos" in my non working hours (like at 5:00 am) so they appear at the top of the list, and then the tasks that require large blocks of time, I've scheduled them around my calendar items. Because they are in a different calendar, I can filter them out when I only want to view my appointments and, if I only want to view my tasks, I can filter out my appointments calendar.
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Hi Julie,
Thanks for this idea. I have managed tasks this way in Outlook for a while and find this easy to handle. I have a slightly different issue...
When I get a reminder on my phone for the task, I can either snooze (for 5 minutes) or dismiss. If I dismiss, it does the same out in my hotmail calendar. I have now 'lost' my reminder and my not do the task.
Have you seen this same behavior? Do you have a work-around?
Thanks,
Marshall
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Unfortunately, the notification settings on the phone are quite limited. I haven't been able to come up with a workaround for that. To get around this, I've set a few alarms to remind me to check my tasks.
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Fantastic! I had been using a similar solution with my iPhone by throwing task items into my calendar as (all day & free). Then I would drop the calendar items into my hourly calendar to allocate time each day (or defer the task to another day). Although your configuration is morecomplex, I believe it is cleaner and scales better for my day to day time management.
Basically, my setup has now morphed into, detail/plan out tasks in OneNote (tasks transfer to Outlook via Ctrl+Shift+1). Treat the real Outlook Tasks as tasks pending scheduling (once schedule mark ascomplete).
Schedule the task by dropping them from real Outlook Tasks to your Tasks Calendar (overlay with work's exchange calendar as needed to manage or allocate time).
One thing I do to "mark off" a calendar task ascomplete is that I delete the calendar task item (from WP7 or Desktop).
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I'm glad you enjoyed my article and appreciate your comments. I'm still finetuning this particular process to suit my needs, but the more I use it the better I like it. It keeps me honest and I think it will help me be more realistic when setting deadlines for myself to complete tasks.
I especially appreciate your OneNote hints. I'm really taking a serious look at OneNote since it syncs so well between the computer, SkyDrive and the phone and finding it to be a very flexible and useful piece of software. I'll try out your method of transferring tasks from OneNote to Outlook. i think it works well for the myriad of unscheduled tasks that I don't want to forget about, but that don't have specific deadlines. For some of the tasks that I do over and over again, but that are not so predictable that I can schedule them as recurring tasks, I'd like to keep them someplace and schedule them on an "as needed" basis. Your OneNote method may help me do this.
Thanks for dropping by and sharing your thoughts and ideas!
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Finetuning as well. Will let you know if I find anything useful.
Another thing I'm doing is deleting the task on the calendar when it iscompleted. This has a few benefits (1) when I turn off all calendars except Tasks on WP7, scrolling vigorously to the top takes you to your most recent tasks and/or overdue tasks, (2) anything that is overdue can be located quickly and rescheduled easily, (3) if I have tasks as reminders of things I want to discuss in a meeting I just double book the task(s) at the time of that meeting.
One issue with deleting is that you don't have the pleasure of showingcompleted tasks as "checked". There are ways around this but nothing straight forward.
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I've followed your idea and so far it's working great! All my calendar, contacts and tasks are now sync'ed to Windows Live and phone. Like you, I also like the way calendar-based task list makes me a little more effective. In Outlook calendar view, I can drag and move tasks to different dates easily to suit my changing schedule. Thank you!
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I don't get it, so your tasks need to have dates/times? Doesn't that make them appointments? I thought the whole point of a task list was that it was for things that don't have a time to do them?
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If you are using a calendar to manage your tasks, then I guess you could consider the tasks to be scheduled tasks. I have many tasks that I schedule almost in the same way I schedule appointments, so I use this methodology to handle those tasks. For my unscheduled tasks, I use the Remember the Milk methodology that is the subject of my other article on this blog.
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Thanks for a productive solution. I think I no longer need Outlook at all... which is what Microsoft is working towards, I suppose. Thanks again. It's nice to find someone working rather than whining!
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Well, I suppose some folks will always want to use Outlook, but I've been trying to get away from Outlook for several years now. I'm not really ready to give it up just yet, because I don't thing the Windows Live applications offer as much functionality as I like to have, but it is nice to be able to check my contacts and calendar from any internet-connected computer.
I'm glad you found my article useful. Thanks for dropping by and sharing your thoughts here.
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I want to sync my MS Outlook 2007 to my Samsung Focus similar to ActiveSync which I used on my previous phone. Will MS becoming up with an application to sync my Outlook tasks, notes, and calendar (including the notes field in tasks and calendar)to sync through mycompany exchange server?
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I don't know if Microsoft plans to provide any way to sync your data in a way that is remotely similar to how it was done in the past. If Microsoft ever provides a local sync for windows phone 7 it won't be any time in the near future and it probably won't sync everything you want to sync.
Better to bite the bullet now and change your thinking and work processes to adapt to the cloud-based syncing that can be used today with windows phone 7 than wait around until you get a way to sync via USB.
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So it is possible to sync tasks and notes with categories if I use MS Exchange Server? Trying to understand if all these work arounds are only for local sync to Outlook
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It does not matter if you are use MS Exchange Server....Windows Phone 7 does not support Outlook tasks or notes and does not provide a way to sync these items to the phone - there's no application on the phone where this kind of of information could go.
There are some 3rd party applications in the Marketplace that will allow you to sync tasks from an Exchange Server to your phone (this includes an application and a means to sync the data to the phone). And there are lots of third party note applications in the Marketplace...some of them do not provide any way to backup notes or sync them anywhere and some of the Notes applications allow you to sync your notes to Dropbox or some other cloud-based service....I don't think any of them are compatible with Outlook Notes.
If you haven't checked out OneNote, you really should give it a try. Syncing OneNote Notebooks between a computer and SkyDrive is great (you have to have OneNote 2010 installed on your computer) and the phone syncs OneNote notebooks from SkyDrive really well. I had to copy & paste all my Outlook notes to a OneNote Notebook, and that was a bit tedious, but it's working great for me..
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In reference to yourcomment " I had to copy & paste all my Outlook notes to a OneNote Notebook, and that was a bit tedious, but it's working great for me..", so MS missed the boat with this too? How can they expect folks to migrate to new tools when they don't provide an easy way to make the switch....painful!
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I don't think MIcrosoft missed the boat with this. I had seen the handwriting on the wall a long time ago in regards to Outlook Notes.....there were lots of problems syncing notes with windows mobile 6, and I had already converted my notes to a windows mobile application called PhatNotes (which I still use). It really came as no big surprise to me that the Outlook Notes were left out of the cloud syncing.
OneNote is so much more than Outlook Notes are. There is so much more you can do with OneNote that you could never do with Outlook Notes. It is always a but tedious to adopt a new way of doing things, but as far as I'm concerned moving my notes to OneNote has been a productive and worthwhile change.
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My wife & I each have a windows phone and a PC running Outlook.(i.e. 2 phones and 2 PC's).
How do we connect these together so a change made on any one device is put on the other 3?
e.g. Can we put the same hotmail address in the outlook connectors on the PC's and the same hotmail address on the two phones?
Or, must we use two Hotmail addresses one for my two devices and another for her two and then sync the two PC's using 3rd party software and the LAN they are both on?
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You can share a single windows live id with your wife or you can each have your own windows live id and set up two Outlook Connector "accounts" within Outlook on your computer.
You can set up multiple windows live ids to sync via the Outlook Connector to Outlook on your desktop computer (I'm currently using the Outlook Connector to sync two different windows live ids to Outlook) and you can set up multiple windows live ids on a windows phone. You can set up the windows live id you use as the primary live id on your phone (and your wife will set up the windows live id she uses as the primary live id on her phone), then you can set up a 2nd windows live account on the phone to sync your wife's data to your phone (and she can do the same to sync your data to her phone). With the secondary windows live accounts, you can choose to sync just the appointments, the contacts, or email or you can sync all this info to your phone.
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Thanks much for this well thought through workaround. OneNote is a phenomenal application and will be upgrading to 2010 to take advantage of it's syncing capacity. I really love using outlook to enter data that I can manage on my phone. But the cloud is the future. And I willing to cut the USB cable, but I still like having a copy on MY hard drive. One day, there going to take that too.
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Mango offers a tasks function that works much like your workaround above. Any chance you could devise a way to sync Outlook tasks with this new function on Mango?
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Mango did add Tasks to windows phone, but unfortunately the Outlook Hotmail Connector has not been updated to accommodate this enhancement....there isn't a way to sync Tasks from Outlook on a computer to a Windows Live account and there also isn't a way to import tasks into the Windows Live account. Unless you sync to an Exchange Server or to Office 365, the only way to create tasks in a Windows Live account so they can be synced to a windows phone is by manually inputting them into the Tasks module of the Windows Live account.
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Well, so far I am NOT impressed. Every time Outlook Connector syncs with the cloud, I get unintelligible errors. Here's a very SMALL sample:
6:37:25 Synchronization error.
6:37:25 Folder Collection Sync Key: 0{f1632bd2-e859-412e-b4bb-394c677a154f}1
6:37:25 Message Collection Sync Key: 0{939e584b-9d7a-488c-990c-d7e56b3e2275}2
6:37:26 Error with Send/Receive.
6:37:26 There was an error synchronizing your folder hierarchy. Error : 80041004.
6:37:26 Synchronizing server changes in folder 'xxxxxx's calendar'
6:37:26 Synchronizing server changes in folder 'Contacts'
6:37:26 Error with Send/Receive.
6:37:26 There was an error synchronizing a contacts folder. Error : 80041004.
Seriously considering returning this phone which I bought yesterday.
And Windows Phone 7.5 LACKS several features that were present in my 6 year old Windows Mobile 5 phone:
1. Syncing tasks
2. Ringer Profiles (Home, Office, Car, Silent, etc.)
3. There appears to be NO WAY to filter contacts (just show me restaurants, doctors, etc.).
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Despite the syncronization error you're getting, is your data syncing from Outlook to your Windows Live account? I get syncronization errors sometimes too, more so lately, but my data still syncs to Windows Live. The errors are annoying but don't seem to be fatal and then they'll go away for a while. I don't really know what's happening with the error message, but it usually happens after I've moved some things around in Outlook.
As you've already learned for yourself, Windows Phone 7.5 is not a version of Windows Mobile. It is a completely new mobile OS and so functionality is slowly being added to it. I like what I see of it so far, and it is far more stable and faster than any version of windows mobile that I ever used - going all the way back to windows mobile 2002 (called pocket pc back in those days) to windows mobile 6.5. I still carry one of my windows mobile devices with me, mostly now to serve as a dedicated GPS for my car, but I'm also waiting for some richer apps to be developed for windows phone that comes close to SPB Time, PhatNotes and Listpro (three windows mobile applications I really love and use every day).
My employer recently migrated over to Office 365, so now I'm able to sync tasks to my phone, although I still use the 2 methods of handling tasks on my phone that I've documented in this blog for certain kinds of tasks. I really like what I see of Office 363, so If I ever leave my employer, I'll probably start subscribing to the individual version of Office 363 which only costs $6 a month. If this is important to you and you don't want to use my tasks syncing workarounds, you might want to check out Office 365.
I believe we'll see some enhancements in future windows phone updates that will provide more flexibility around ringtones, but you might think about adding your vote (or creating a thread) for this functionality in the uservoice forum that is owned and operated by Microsoft just for the purpose of capturing and prioritizing windows phone enhancement requests.
There are ways to filter contacts in windows phone. You can filter your contacts by
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