The New To-Do Bar Lets You Work More Efficiently

 

The To-Do Bar is perhaps the best new user interface element in Outlook 2007. It pulls together key items from both the Calendar and Tasks views into a single bar available in most views. With it, you can see what you need to do next, and often do it, without leaving the view you are working in now. In earlier versions of Outlook, you had to dig around to get this information, which is now available at a glance. The To-Do Bar is an elegant addition to the user interface of Outlook 2007.

To take full advantage of the To-Do Bar, you have to realize that everything about it is active. It isn’t just a display of information. Click an item in the To-Do Bar and you can work with it as if you were in the item’s home view. In other words, you can:

• Use the Date Navigator to move around the Calendar
• Remain in the current view while opening and modifying Appointments
• Work with the listed tasks, even create new ones, again without leaving the current view.

You’ll soon get used to clicking items in the To-Do Bar instead of jumping all over the place to find the information you need, then resuming your original activity. You’ll see the information you need at a glance, and be able to do it with as little disruption of your work flow as possible.

By default, the To-Do Bar appears to the right of every view. If you minimize it, it looks like a strip down the edge of the window; when expanded, the To-Do Bar typically shows the Date Navigator (a small calendar) at the top, your next three appointments in the middle, and a list of your tasks at the bottom. Click the right or left arrows at the top of the Bar to expand or minimize it.

Actually working with the items in the To-Do Bar couldn’t be simpler:

• Click a date in the Date Navigator to open the Calendar to that day.
• Double-click an appointment or task to open it.
• Type into the Type a new task box at the top of the task list to add one.
• Click the header of the task list to change the order the tasks are displayed in.

It doesn’t get much easier than that!

You can also modify the way the To-Do Bar works to make it display information the way you want.