Complete Tasks On Outlook Series And They

To generate a new task based on this recurring task, you must mark the current task (the one visible in Figure C) as complete.

For instance, if you have a production meeting every Tuesday morning, you can create one appointment that appears on your calendar every Tuesday.

Denise contacted me when she tried to create a recurring task from a recurring appointment.

She expected to see numerous tasks--the current one and those in the future--after dragging the appointment to the Tasks icon.

That didnt happen.

In this article, Ill explain why and shed some light on how Outlooks recurring tasks work.

Denises solution is easy When Denise tried to create a recurring task from a recurring appointment, she saw a single task instead of the multiple tasks she expected.

Although you can create a recurring task from an appointment, you must set the recurrence options manually.

Denises solution is to remember to set the recurring properties when she creates a task instead of depending on Outlook to retrieve those properties from the original appointment.

Its not hard to do; the trick is remembering that you must take that extra step.

SEE: How to reverse and transpose Excel data with this powerful but simple solution About recurring tasks.

Complete Tasks On Outlook Series And They

Outlook generates all the appointments needed to fulfill the series and they remain visible on your calendar until you manually delete them.

When you set the recurring properties for a task, Outlook displays the original (or current) task.

Only when you mark the current task as complete will Outlook display the next one--and only that one--in the series.

If thats not what you expect, you might think somethings wrong.

Even if Denise had set the recurring properties for the new task she was creating, she still wouldnt have seen future tasks.

Figure A shows a new task with a start date of Monday, June 5, 2017.

For better or worse, Outlook doesnt use the current date as the default; you must manually select a start date.

Click the Daily option to the left and then enter 4 in the Every field ( Figure B ).

These options allow you to specify your recurring interval--every day, every four days, once a week, every two weeks, every other Tuesday, and so on.

Take note of the Regenerate New Task option; the default is 1, but you can change it.

This setting determines how quickly Outlook generates the next new task when you complete the current one.

At this point, you could also set an end date to create a range, but for this example, retain the default No End Date setting.

Click OK, then click Save Close in the Actions group to return to the Task pane.

In Figure C, you can see the new recurring task for the first date.

Complete Tasks On Outlook For Mac