Converting Outlook Emails to Appointments or Tasks

You may want to convert an email to a Task or Appointment if you need to take some action on it. Your Outlook Task List and your Calendar are where you should put any items that you need to work on.

Here are two ways to ‘magically’ convert an Outlook email to an appointment or task item

Method 1: Drag and Drop

1. Right-click and drag the email you want to convert.

2. Drop the item to the Task or Appointment folder where you want the new item to be created. A menu appears as shown below:

3. On the menu, select the option you want to use. You can either copy the email to the new location or move it there. The original email can either be copied as text into the body of the new task or appointment… or it can be attached to it. Personally I prefer to choose Copy as Attachment. This makes it easier to access the full contents of the email and then do a Reply if I need to.

Once you select an option, the new task or appointment will be created.

4. Fill in any additional information needed, and save the item.

Method 2: A Simple Button Click

There is a easier and more powerful way of doing this if you are a user of our addin QuickFile for Outlook. QuickFile adds a few extra buttons to the Outlook toolbar or Ribbon to give Outlook some extra functionality.

Simply select the email and then click the appropriate button on the toolbar 

What is even cooler is that QuickFile for Outlook can also automatically create appointments and tasks from outgoing emails after they are sent. This is really handy if you need to take action on a future date on an email.

1. Compose your email as you normally would
2. Click the Send button, the Send & File screen will be displayed.
3. Click the Show Options >> link on the screen to expand the form
4. Click on Task/Schedule it! link to open the screen below:

5. Place a tick in the respective checkboxes to make an Appointment and/or Task.
6. Fill in the required fields and click OK.
7. After saving these setting click Send&File to send the email. (The Appointment/Task will also be created if you clicked on Send Only or Send&Delete)

According to your settings your Task and/or Appointment will be created.

If you aren’t a user of QuickFile yet, Click here to download a fully functional 30 days trial version of QuickFile for Outlook