Purpose
Microsoft To-Do is a task management app that works on your phone, tablet, and computer. The app centers on a simple to-do list, much like the one in Outlook, but adds a few new twists to it. It can be used with Outlook, as the tasks will mostly synchronize, or on its own as a stand alone.
Basic Use
Video explanation
My Day
The big innovation with To Do is the My Day function. At the beginning of each day, you open up My Day and it’s blank. The thought is you may have all of these tasks that are nicely categorized and they’re dated, but YOU choose what you do that day.
Click on the smart suggestion light bulb and it’s going to suggest things that you do today based on what you have in these lists and what the due dates are. I decided that clean my room is due today but there’s no way I’m doing that.
Now choose what you want to do with your day from scratch. This will give you a fresh list totally under your control. You can left-click and you can reorder by holding down your left mouse key or your finger if you’re on mobile and dragging it down. If you get it done, mark it as completed. If you decide you’re not going to do it, remove it from My Day by moving it to another list. If you decide you don’t want to do something on your My Day list at all, just delete it.
Conclusion
To Do’s power lies in its comfortable resting spot in the Office 365 environment which gives it integration with Outlook. The My Day function sets it apart from Outlook and makes it a worthy candidate for your organization app of choice.
Alan Bennett says:
How do I print the tasks I’ve chosen for “my day?”
Prolific Oaktree says:
You can’t right now. However, this request has been submitted to Microsoft and it has a lot of votes so there’s a good chance that the print ability will be available soon.
Oliver says:
Thanks for the article. Would you know why My Day in the Outlook web client doesn’t show the tasks, only the calendar? Thank you
Prolific Oaktree says:
I don’t know. That sounds odd. Perhaps you’re mixing up two different MS accounts?
Shaharin Yussof says:
But it still needs the a feature that allows you to automatically carry over unfinished My Day tasks to the next day.
Prolific Oaktree says:
It gets rid of them on purpose so that you can start fresh.
AngryD says:
I’m sorry, but “My Day doesn’t auto populate to let you pick what you want to accomplish” is nonsense. Why put dates on your tasks at all?
The way this SHOULD work is that you enter what you need to get done and it automatically populates into My Day where you can work on subtasks as necessary. The way it DOES work is that now I have to add a bunch of extra steps to do what literally ANY OTHER reminder app does by DEFAULT.
Microsoft free apps always seem to have a fatal flaw. In “mail” it was that for the first three years it was out you couldn’t send or receive attachments. And now in to do the Fatal flaw has two parts. First, it’s 2022, don’t pick my background for me. The fact that there are only seven allowed backgrounds for this piece of software makes me feel like I’m in China or North Korea. I have to use an approved background instead of the ones I want.
The second fatal flaw is what you are making excuses for: my day does not work properly. It does not work the way any other reminder app works. This does not give flexibility to the user. It’s simply makes it useless as a reminder tool. I need something to tell me what needs to be done today. Clearly, this app is not that item.
Prolific Oaktree says:
I supposed you could use it without the “My Day” feature and instead just go by dates.
Nick says:
Actually this is what I like about Microsoft Todo. I use Todoist and every new day I have tens of unfinished tasks waiting for me which is demoralising. Here I can choose the most important thing I want to focus on, if I finish before the end of the day, than I can pull more taks from the suggestion list. The only thing I’m missing is a view to see the completed tasks by day, so I can review my week. Any ideas on how to do that?