The To-Do Bar in Outlook 2007

The To-Do Bar is one of the bigger new features in Outlook 2007. Outlook Today may provide an overview of your day, the To-Do Bar pulls together all of Outlook's features and uses less space.

With To-Do Bar, you can work on almost anything instantly without changing the view. The To-Do Bar holds the current month's calendar, the three next appointments, and a list of current tasks.

About the only thing you can do in Outlook Today is check off a completed task. The rest requires clicking an item to change or delete it. Outlook Today also takes up the whole window.

To-Do Bar uses a little space on the right side and you can minimize it with one click on the ">>" at the top of the To-Do Bar. While minimized, To-Do Bar displays the next appointment and the number of tasks due for the day.

To-Do Bar appears in Mail, Task, Contact and Notes views. Minimize and maximize with a click or you can turn it off by doing the following:

1. Click "View."

2. Select "To-Do Bar."

3. Select "Off."

To-Do Bar contains three parts that you can turn off and on. The parts include the following:

• Date Navigator
• Appointments
• Task List

The Task List isn't limited to the items you enter in Tasks. It also contains flagged e-mails and notes. You could drag these items into the To-Do Bar to turn them into To-Do items.

Tip: To-do items are anything flagged for follow up including e-mail messages, tasks and contacts. Tasks are items created in Outlook to track from start to finish. To-do items are not always tasks, but tasks are always to-do items.

Turn off Date Navigator, Appointments or To-Do moves up the other content up in the bar and creates more white space. You can fill the white space by increasing the number of To-Do items and rows of months. Access Options to change the view by doing the following:

1. Click "View."

2. Select "To-Do Bar."

3. Select "Options."

To-Do Bar Options lets you select which items to display in the bar. Date Navigator's "Number of Month Rows" represents one month when the To-Do Bar appears in its default size. Enter "2" to view the current and next months in the To-Do Bar. You can display up to nine rows' worth of months.

Widen the To-Do Bar to view more months per row. Move the cursor to the left edge of the To-Do Bar until the cursor changes to and drag the cursor to change the size. The To-Do Bar can go as far as half of the screen. Scroll through past and future months by clicking on the blue arrows next to the month in the first row.

For "Show Appointments," enter the number of appointments you wish to view in the To-Do Bar. The default is 3 with a max of 25 appointments.

Tip: Right-click the To-Do Bar title bar to access its options.