How to use Microsoft To Do

How to use Microsoft To Do


How to use Microsoft To Do

In this step-by-step tutorial, learn how to keep track of your tasks using Microsoft To Do. Microsoft To Do is a free task tracking app that you can access via http://todo.microsoft.com or via http://www.Office.com.

0:00 Introduction
1:00 How to get Microsoft To Do
3:08 Create first task
3:50 Create a list of tasks
4:30 Edit list Name
4:48 Set a theme for your list
5:15 Add tasks to list
7:00 Edit task attributes like importance, due date, etc.
7:42 Add sub-steps
8:45 How My Day works
10:05 Set reminders
10:20 Add a due date
11:00 Repeat / recurring tasks
11:15 Category colors
11:30 Attach an item \u0026 add note
11:50 Move and Copy tasks
12:35 Prioritizing and sorting tasks
13:25 Grouping lists
14:20 Share lists with others and assign tasks
17:57 Completed tasks
18:40 Search
19:20 Create tasks from email
20:20 Advanced settings
21:07 Wrap up

Learn how to track tasks across a team using Microsoft Planner:    • How to use Microsoft Planner  

As full-disclosure, I work at Microsoft as a full-time employee.


Content

0.16 -> Hi everyone! My name is Kevin. Today I want  to show you how you can both get and also use  
7.04 -> Microsoft To Do. What is Microsoft To Do?  It's a task tracking app that's very powerful  
13.92 -> but also very easy to use. As full disclosure  before we jump into this, I work at Microsoft  
19.84 -> as a full-time employee and on that topic of  being an employee at Microsoft, I attribute  
25.84 -> a lot of my success at Microsoft to using a  task list. Now I know that sounds kind of silly  
30.96 -> but anytime I go to a meeting, anytime I talk to  a colleague in the hallway, anytime I get an email  
36.64 -> and there's some type of follow-up for me to work  on, I add it to my task list. And so, what this  
41.28 -> allows me to do, it helps me keep on top of any  of the work that I need to get done and it really  
46.16 -> makes sure that I'm productive and efficient  with my time. And today I want to show you how  
51.28 -> To Do can also help you stay on top of your life  and be more productive and efficient. All right,  
56.72 -> well why don't we jump on the PC, and I'll show  you how to take advantage of it. To start off,  
61.52 -> I want to show you how you can get Microsoft To Do  and there are a few different ways you can get it.  
67.36 -> The first one and probably the most direct path  is you simply navigate to todo.microsoft.com  
74.48 -> and that'll drop you on the Microsoft To Do  homepage and then you look at the primary action  
80.4 -> here is get started. You simply click on there  and then you can get started with Microsoft To Do.  
85.76 -> Another way that you can also get Microsoft  To Do is navigate to the website office.com  
91.6 -> and then click on sign in. Either path that  you take, you're going to need to enter your  
96.96 -> Microsoft account. If you already have one,  you could go ahead and just type it in here.  
101.68 -> If you don't have a Microsoft account, don't  worry, you can still get to Microsoft To Do. This  
107.04 -> text here says no account. Well don't worry, click  here to create one. It's entirely free to create a  
112.88 -> Microsoft account. It won't cost you anything at  all. Now I've already gone ahead and logged in,  
118.48 -> so I'm going to go ahead and open it up. Now if  you go directly to todo.microsoft.com and log in,  
125.6 -> it'll drop you on the main To Do interface and  we'll get to this in just a moment. If you go  
131.28 -> through office.com and log in, you'll land on  the main office.com website and right here what  
137.84 -> you can do is to go to Microsoft To Do, you could  click here. So why would you go through this path  
142.32 -> first just todo.microsoft.com? Well on office.com,  not only do you get Microsoft To Do as a very,  
148.8 -> very awesome task tracking app, you also get  all these other productivity tools like Outlook,  
154.64 -> you get free cloud storage with OneDrive, you get  Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and the list goes  
159.92 -> on. So you get lots of great productivity tools  included alongside To Do. Today's topic is To Do,  
167.12 -> so we're going to ignore all these other ones  for now and we're going to simply jump directly  
170.96 -> into Microsoft To Do and here I am in the main  interface and what we can do is why don't we  
178.32 -> go ahead and simply create a task and what I'm  going to do is over here on the left hand side,  
183.2 -> I'm going to click on this one that says tasks.  We'll go through what these other options are  
187.6 -> in a moment, but what I want to do is let's  go ahead and just get our first task in here.  
192.16 -> So, what I'm going to do is let's, why don't  we create our first task and maybe this one is  
196.24 -> going to be Welcome to Microsoft To Do. That'll be  our first task and when you enter a task in here,  
201.2 -> simply click on enter and here we have our first  task on the task list. One of the things that I  
206.56 -> can do is as soon as you complete a task,  there's this round circle right here. I'm  
211.36 -> going to go ahead and click on this and I get  a nice little bell that congratulates me that I  
216.24 -> finished my first task. So congratulations, we've  entered To Do and we've already finished our first  
221.52 -> task. It's actually pretty easy and fun adding  tasks and completing tasks. Now what I want to  
226.64 -> do is this is just a generic list that you could  throw tasks in, but what I want to do is I want  
231.68 -> to actually create a list of tasks. Now the way  to think of a list is this is a group of tasks.  
238.24 -> So maybe let's say you have a grocery  shopping list. You could put them in a list  
242.56 -> or maybe in my case, maybe if you, let's say you  want to start a YouTube channel, maybe I'll have  
246.64 -> a list around starting a YouTube channel.  So whatever kind of a general topic is that  
251.28 -> you'll have a lot of tasks relate to, you could  create a list around those. So, in this case,  
256.4 -> what I'm going to do is I'm going to start a  YouTube channel and I'm going to create a list  
259.92 -> around that. So, I'll go ahead and enter that. And  here you see, I have a list now and let's say that  
266.24 -> actually I meant to say start an amazing YouTube  channel. We're not just going for the kind of the  
270.4 -> plain and simple. We want to make this amazing. If  you want to rename your channel or your list, what  
275.04 -> you could do is simply click on the name up here  and then I could go ahead and edit it. All right,  
279.84 -> that's more like it. This'll, this'll really  inspire us as we're creating a YouTube channel.  
284.64 -> And what I can do then is on the right of a  text, I see the ellipses here or the triple dot,  
289.84 -> and I'll click on that and some things that  I could do for lists, I could set a theme. So  
294.08 -> right now it's in kind of a cool blue. Why  don't I go with a calming green instead? And  
298.48 -> so I'm going to go ahead and set this theme for  my list. So there I go. I have my list in place.  
305.28 -> I've, I've retitled the name and now what I want  to do is I want to add some tasks under this list.  
311.36 -> And so, one of the things is when you're starting  a YouTube channel, well, you don't want to just  
315.92 -> start a channel and not know what it's going to  be about. So maybe my first task is going to be,  
320.16 -> what is the channel about? We got to figure out  what's the purpose of this. A fun story for my  
325.04 -> YouTube channel. I actually started with travel  videos eventually, and I finally pivoted my way  
330 -> over to tech and how to videos. Part of the reason  why is at Microsoft, I work on office.com. I read  
335.84 -> a lot of customer feedback and there's a lot of  computer questions, a lot of kind of assistance  
342.32 -> that people need. And so I said, Hey, maybe I  can make videos that help make computers and  
346.4 -> different Microsoft tools easier to use. And  so that's part of the reason I landed on this  
350.72 -> channel type. Anyway, let's go ahead and add  some other items. So not only do you have to  
355.28 -> decide what the channel is about, but you know,  if you're going to create a YouTube channel, you  
358.64 -> also probably need some nice lighting. Hopefully  you like my lighting that you see in my video.  
364.08 -> In this case, I'm doing the screen recording  video. So I need some screen recording software.  
368.56 -> I probably also need some editing  software once I record all my footage  
373.04 -> and let me throw in a camera because you probably  all want to see my beautiful face. I need a camera  
377.44 -> to capture it. Just kidding there. And then I'm  also going to throw in a microphone as well. This  
383.28 -> way you could hear me better. Now, one of the  things, if you ever are considering setting up  
387.36 -> a YouTube channel or doing any type of recording,  a good microphone makes a massive difference.  
393.2 -> If you use a built-in microphone as part of a  webcam or just a built-in microphone on a laptop,  
398 -> it's not going to sound that good. So very  critical for setting up a YouTube channel.  
402.24 -> So here I have all of my tasks on my list. And one  of the things that I want to do is let me actually  
408.96 -> click into one of these tasks to show you what  you can do. Right now, I just have kind of a basic  
413.36 -> task list here, but I could do a lot more with  these different tasks. And this is going to show  
418.16 -> you some of the power of Microsoft To Do. So let's  click on what is the channel about. When I click  
424.4 -> on this task, what you'll see is I have this pane  appear on the right-hand side. And what I can do  
430.16 -> now is I can click on this star and I can tag this  or mark it as important. So I could click there.  
436.24 -> What I can also do is I could click on the  star over here to mark it as important or to  
440.64 -> deselect it as being important. One thing you'll  see that happened is as soon as I clicked on the  
444.96 -> star, it moved it to the top of my list. So To  Do is being smart about what my prioritized tasks  
450.72 -> are. If I mark it important, well, it's probably  a higher priority. And to be fair, before I get a  
455.12 -> microphone, a camera, editing software, I should  probably know what my channel is about. So it  
459.12 -> kind of makes sense to move this one to the top.  Within this pane, what I could do is I could add  
464.32 -> sub steps. So you could have a higher level task  and maybe that task has additional steps that you  
470.32 -> need to get done. So to figure out what my channel  is about, well, maybe as a first step, I want to  
475.44 -> go through and actually brainstorm ideas. And  so maybe my goal is let's brainstorm at least  
479.6 -> 20 ideas first. And then maybe as a next step,  once I've brainstormed my 20 ideas, let me narrow  
484.96 -> that down to what I think are the top three.  And once I have my top three, maybe I could  
489.92 -> pull in some friends and family, and then I could  have them vote on what their favorite one is,  
494.24 -> and then I can narrow it down to my top one. And  that'll help me land on what my channel topic is.  
500.4 -> Now, as I go down here, when I mark this one  as important, what's interesting is you'll see  
505.52 -> over here on the left-hand side, as soon as I mark  something as important, now it also includes it on  
511.04 -> my important list. So I'll go ahead and click on  here. And here you see what is the channel about  
516.4 -> has been filtered or shown on this important view.  So I'm going to go back to my list. Let's click  
521.92 -> back into this task. One of the things I can also  do within this pane, I could add it to my day. So  
527.6 -> let me go ahead and add this to my day. And here  too, just like when I set a task to important,  
532.96 -> you also see that it added a task to my day. And  so if I click on this, now I see the task here.  
538.64 -> Now what's really interesting about the my day  view is at the end of the day, any task that's  
545.2 -> in this view drops off the my day view. So every  day you have to define what your my day tasks are.  
552.88 -> And one of the really nice things about this is  when people have done research on task lists and  
558.56 -> tracking to-dos, one of the challenges is people  are very ambitious about adding tasks and your  
563.68 -> task list grows and grows and grows. And maybe  you add another task here and another task there.  
568.24 -> And one of the challenges is overtime it becomes  somewhat overwhelming because you have so many  
573.04 -> tasks on your task list. My day aims to  address this where at the end of the day,  
577.84 -> they simply drop off and you have a clear list.  And then tomorrow you could go through and you  
582.16 -> could figure out what goes on my day view. And  what's nice is just like I went into this list and  
587.52 -> I clicked on this task and I added it to my day,  you could go into any task and add it to my day.  
593.12 -> And in fact, what I could even do is I could  even click on this task and just drag it,  
597.2 -> drag and drop it over in my day as one way of  adding it there. So this way every day you get, in  
602.72 -> a sense, a clean slate. Some of the other things  that I could do when I'm clicked into this task,  
607.04 -> I could also indicate when I want a reminder. So  I could say, hey, remind me about this tomorrow,  
612.16 -> maybe at 9 a.m. on Tuesday. I could add a due  date. So if I really want to force myself to,  
617.36 -> you know, make sure that I'm really getting  this item done, maybe I'll say, hey,  
620.8 -> let's say maybe tomorrow I should I should land  on what my channel is about. And here, too,  
625.44 -> as I select a date here, you'll also see that it  added it within this view over here in plans. And  
631.12 -> here I see the due date appearing on here. So as  I go through each one of these tasks, whether it's  
636.88 -> marking it as important, whether it's adding it to  my day, whether it's setting a due date on this,  
641.36 -> you'll notice in each one of these cases, it's  adding it to one of these categories. The way to  
645.92 -> think of this is as I set different settings on  this side, in a sense, it's tagging an item and  
651.76 -> then these are the different filtered views for  those different tags that I assign to an item.  
657.6 -> Some of the other things that I could do on  here is I could repeat tasks. So let's say,  
661.84 -> I don't know, maybe you have an item household  chores and one of them is take out the trash  
665.6 -> and you do that weekly. You could set it to recur  or repeat. And so that way you'll get a reminder  
670.16 -> every single week and you have to check it off.  As I go down, too, you can also choose a category.  
675.04 -> You have different colors that you could assign  to a task. And these different colors can mean  
679.28 -> different things. Maybe red is urgent. Maybe green  is a family item. However you want to organize,  
684.32 -> you could use these categories how you see fit.  I can also attach an item if I want to do this.  
689.28 -> This opens up the Windows file picker or whatever  operating system you're on. It pulls up the file  
695.04 -> picker. And then I could also add in a note  here. So, I could add some additional context.  
700.56 -> Now, if I go back to the main task view here, what  I can also do is I can right click on an item and  
706.32 -> this brings up a context menu here. And within  here, you'll notice that many of these different  
711.52 -> controls that I have are very similar to the pane  on the right. Here I could add to the my day. I  
716.32 -> could set importance. I could set the due date.  But I do have some additional controls down here  
721.28 -> that I don't get in the right-hand pane. What I  could do is I could create a new list from this  
726.16 -> task. So, let's say I started adding things and  maybe it doesn't really fit in start an amazing  
730.56 -> YouTube channel. So, I could just create a new  list. I could also move tasks around to different  
734.88 -> lists or I could copy the task to a different  list. So lots of task management controls when  
740.08 -> you right click on a task. Now that I've added  my tasks in here and I've added a few different  
745.36 -> filters to the item, what I can do now is, well,  how do I prioritize my tasks that I see in this  
750.72 -> view? Well, a really easy way to prioritize my  tasks is I could simply click on an item and I  
755.84 -> could drag it in my list. So I could pull  this down and maybe I pull the light up.  
760.88 -> And so I can move things around the list as I see  fit. What I can also do is another way to organize  
766.88 -> this list. Not only can I drag and drop, but what  I can do is I could go up to this sort dropdown  
772 -> and here I could sort by importance. So there are  my most important items will show up at the top.  
776.88 -> I could sort by the due date. I could sort  by any tasks that have been added to my day,  
781.04 -> sort alphabetically and also by the creation date.  So I have lots of different ways to sort. And  
786.64 -> then here you can adjust the order in the, in the  order that it sorts these items. So I could have  
791.6 -> importance at the top or importance at the bottom.  And if I want to get rid of the different sort,  
797.04 -> I could go ahead and click on this X  and that'll remove the sorting again.  
801.2 -> This list here, this is all focused on equipment,  getting my channel started, but let's say that I  
806.56 -> want a different list to keep track of all of my  video ideas. What I'm going to do is I'm going to  
810.96 -> add another list now, and this one is going to be  called video ideas. And I'm going to type in the  
815.68 -> list name and I'm going to hit enter. So now I  have two different lists. One of the nice things  
820.24 -> that Microsoft To Do allows you to do is you can  also group together lists. So here I'm going to  
824.8 -> create a group and maybe I'm going to call this  simply YouTube. So all of my YouTube content,  
830.32 -> I want to put all of my YouTube related lists  within this group. And so what I could do is  
834.56 -> I could pull the video ideas list into this group  and I could also pull the original list into here  
840.16 -> as well that we just looked at. And so now I have  a group with separate lists under that group. And  
845.36 -> so this is a nice way just to organize all the  different lists you have. So maybe, you know, in  
850.32 -> this case I might have my YouTube group and then  maybe I have a personal group where I have things  
854.24 -> like grocery shopping or household chores. So you  could organize it in whatever way you'd like to.  
860.88 -> Now that I have my list created, one of the very  powerful features of Microsoft To Do is that you  
866.8 -> can share lists with others. So with my one list  here, start an amazing YouTube channel. Let's say  
873.12 -> that I wanted to collaborate on this with someone  else. What I could do is I could click on the list  
878.32 -> and I could right click on it and then I could  share the list from here. What I can also do is  
883.36 -> up here in the top right hand corner, I also  have the option to share the list from here.  
888.8 -> I'll go ahead and let's click on this. And what  I can do is I could create an invitation link.  
894.24 -> So with this invitation link, anyone will be able  to join and then also edit this list. Now imagine  
900.64 -> that you and your wife or you and your husband,  let's say that you want to have a shared list,  
904.88 -> maybe household chores, and you could assign  a bunch of tasks to your husband. I kid you  
909.76 -> not. This is what my wife does to me. And so what  you could do is let's create an invitation link.  
915.12 -> And what I could do then is I could invite someone  via email or I could simply copy this link and I  
920.24 -> could message it to someone. I could use WhatsApp  or I could use text message and I could send this  
924.48 -> link to someone and then they can work with me  on this list. So, I'm going to go ahead. Let's  
930.24 -> let me copy the link here and I can now  send that to someone from my clipboard. So,  
934.48 -> this is now a shared list and you'll see this icon  appears here indicating that it is a shared list.  
942.64 -> One of the things I could do now is if I click on  one of the tasks, let's say with the microphone,  
947.36 -> I don't really know what microphone to  get. If I click on the task microphone,  
952 -> now I'll see all the same details that we saw  before, but I see an additional category now  
957.52 -> called assign to. If I click on assign to,  what I could do is anyone who has gotten access  
964 -> to this task list, I could assign the task to  them. In this case, I haven't invited anyone  
969.28 -> else yet or no one else has joined, but  I could go ahead and assign it to myself  
973.2 -> and you'll see that my initials show up now  indicating that this is my task. If I had  
978.56 -> someone else invited to this task list, I would  see their initials show up to whatever tasks that  
984 -> they own. So in a sense, not only can I track my  own tasks very easily, it also allows me to track  
990.88 -> team type tasks. Now what I see is now that  I've assigned a task to myself, once again,  
996 -> I'm going to go over to the left hand side  and I see this assigned to you category. If  
1001.04 -> I click on that, I could see a list of all of the  different tasks across all of my different lists  
1006.64 -> that are assigned to me. So another nice  way to tag tasks and then to filter those by  
1013.04 -> different categories. Now I've shown you how to  create tasks within lists, how to create lists,  
1018.56 -> and we've also looked at how different items  show up within these views, but I'm not just  
1022.72 -> limited to items showing up in these views by  tagging it. What I can also do is I could simply  
1028.72 -> type in an idea directly in here, so I could  click on add a task. I'm going to go ahead,  
1033.6 -> type in the task, hit enter, and now  this shows up in my important view,  
1037.76 -> but it doesn't show up on any of the lists. And  let's say I typed it in, I know this is important,  
1042.08 -> so I typed it in here. What I could do is  I'm going to right click on this and now I  
1045.68 -> can move the task and I'll put it in my video  ideas list. So how do you use Microsoft To Do?  
1050.56 -> Let me throw that in as a video idea. So I could  also go ahead and create a task and say my day  
1056.16 -> important or planned. I could create a task here  first, and then I could assign it to a list. So  
1061.68 -> you could either create a task and a list first,  or you could create the task first and then assign  
1066.32 -> it to a list, or heck, you don't even have to  assign it to a list. However you want to work,  
1070.96 -> To Do has a lot of flexibility. Now I'm going  to jump into my start an amazing YouTube channel  
1076.24 -> list here. And one of the things I want to do  is I've been very productive since we started  
1081.36 -> chatting. I like to multitask. So while I've been  giving you this tutorial of To Do, I've also been  
1087.84 -> getting some things done. I did some research  around microphones. I ordered a microphone.  
1091.76 -> I did some research on cameras and I bought a  camera. So let me check that off once again.  
1096.08 -> There's that satisfying bell that you hear that  lets you know that you completed some tasks and  
1101.92 -> they now show up in a completed view. I could also  go ahead and minimize that list, or I could expand  
1106.8 -> the list so I could decide whether I want to see  everything here or only things that still need to  
1112.32 -> be done. Now let's say I go back to my day view  and you know, I'm here and you know, maybe I have  
1117.76 -> a lot of tasks on my list and you know, I remember  that I had one around getting a light. So let me  
1123.2 -> go ahead and here I can click on search and let  me type in light and their search is very powerful  
1128.96 -> where it simply looks across all of your different  tasks. And here at surfaces, this task right here,  
1134 -> and then I can jump into that task very quickly  using search. Aside from me just going ahead  
1139.52 -> and adding tasks in here and searching for tasks  that I created, especially at my job at Microsoft,  
1145.36 -> one of the biggest sources of tasks for me is  email. You get an email, someone asks you to do  
1150.96 -> something, you know, you could read the email  and then just manually type in a task into  
1155.76 -> To Do, or what you could do is I can click  into Outlook. So, I have my Outlook inbox open  
1161.12 -> and here's an email I got from the Windows Insider  Program. So maybe I want to go ahead and read this  
1165.44 -> email. And so that's a follow up for me where I  want to read on, read about this. So when I hover  
1169.76 -> over the message in Outlook, what you'll see here  is I have these different icons. I could delete,  
1174.72 -> I can mark as read or here I could flag this  message. And if I go back to Microsoft To Do now,  
1180.96 -> one of the things that you'll see is that flagged  message will show up in my flagged email category.  
1187.04 -> Here you see the email message shows up in here.  So, I tagged it in Outlook and now it's showing up  
1192.16 -> on my list. So this is another place that I could  keep track of what I need to get done. So I have  
1197.36 -> the ability both to create my own tasks and also  to flag emails as tasks and emails tend to be one  
1203.12 -> of the biggest sources of tasks that you need  to get done and here too, even with this task,  
1208.72 -> what I could do is I could right click on it and I  could add it to my day if this is something that I  
1212.4 -> want to follow up on today. Now we've gone through  most of the core functionality in Microsoft To Do,  
1218.72 -> but I want to finish off with one additional thing  and I'm going to go over here up on the top right  
1223.68 -> hand up here on the, uh, the header. And I'm going  to click on the settings gear and this opens up a  
1228.96 -> pane with a whole bunch of different settings. And  now there are two interesting settings that I want  
1233.68 -> to call out. So you have all sorts of things  where you could set whether it plays a sound,  
1238.08 -> whether you have to confirm before deleting.  But the interesting ones is you could turn on  
1242.72 -> additional views. Here if I turn on all, I also  get an all list over here that shows me all of  
1248.56 -> my tasks across all of my categories. And I also  have the ability to view a completed list. So here  
1254.64 -> this adds an additional view here. So, let's say  you're at work and maybe your boss is asking you,  
1259.36 -> Hey, what have you done recently? Turn on that  completed view and you can get a quick view of  
1262.72 -> everything you've accomplished and gotten done.  All right. Well, that was a quick tutorial of how  
1268.32 -> you can use Microsoft To Do, to be more efficient  and productive. If you found this video helpful  
1274.56 -> and you think you are now a task master, give  this video a thumbs up. If you want to see more  
1280.48 -> videos like this in the future, hit that subscribe  button. That way you'll get a notification anytime  
1285.2 -> new content like this comes out. And lastly, if  you want to see me cover any other topics in the  
1289.84 -> future, feel free to leave a comment down below. I  read them all and I'll add it to my list of videos  
1294.8 -> to create. You know, this is actually one of my  biggest sources of video ideas. I've gotten lots  
1299.44 -> of suggestions before, and then I've created  videos based on those suggestions. All right.  
1303.68 -> Well, that's all I had for you today. I hope you  enjoyed, and I hope to see you next time. Bye.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCc56WuQMjk