By Diane Klug, St. Louis, Missouri, 1-314-206-4203, klug@pbworld.com

Use TASKS in Microsoft Outlook whenever you need to remind yourself of something. It’s easy. Let’s say you need to respond to an e-mail by a certain deadline. Simply set a reminder to yourself to respond by the deadline. With your e-mail open, choose File, Copy to Folder, Mailbox, Tasks (Figures 1 and 2).

Figure 1: Step 1a-Choose file, copy to folder

Figure 2: Step 1b- Under mailbox, select Tasks. Figure 3: Task Screen

A task will then open with your e-mail as an attachment and the e-mail’s subject line as your subject. Don’t forget to set a due date for your reminder and change the subject as necessary to remind you or add text to the task with details (Figure 3).

You will receive a reminder at your designated date/time. When you are ready to respond to that e-mail; open your task and double-click the attachment. Your original e-mail will come back-ready for you to reply or forward as appropriate. If you don’t have time to deal with it then, “snooze” it for 5 minutes or up to 2 weeks and the reminder will prompt you again later. You can also dismiss the reminder or add additional e-mails (click Insert, Item to choose another e-mail to add). Of course, you can open Tasks in Outlook and click on your task to respond or delete it at any time.