Outlook 2007: Use Drag and Drop to Create Tasks, Appointments and Contacts from Existing Emails
Contributed by Rob Rogers 
Tagged: Microsoft Outlook By using drag and drop, you can easily create new tasks, appointments and contacts from the emails in your Inbox. This can be a huge time saver and a very simple method for organizing the various to-do’s in your emails.
1. Open Outlook and go to your Inbox.
2. Find an email that you wish to create a Task, Appointment or Contact from.
3. Drag and Drop the email onto the desired icon at the bottom of the Navigation Pane on the left side of the application.
The icons will either be large and labled:
or small and icon-only:
You want to drag and drop the email onto the desired icon (Tasks, Calendar, or Contacts).
4. Dropping the email on the Tasks icon will fill in the Subject of the Task with the subject from the email. The email itself will be placed in the body of the task for easy reference. Simply add a Start date and Due date, add a reminder and set a Priority and save the Task.
Dropping the email on the Calendar icon will fill in the Subject of the appointment with the subject from the email. The email itself will be placed in the body of the appointment for easy reference. Add a Start time and End time for the appointment and save.
Dropping the email on the Contacts icon will fill in the Full Name and email address of the person that sent the email. The email itself will be included in the Notes for that contact. Add any additional information and save the new contact.
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Krs Kesser said on May 3, 2009
What a huge time saver – if only we had Microsoft 2007 in our district!!! I work for DoDDS in Europe…..
Stefan said on May 8, 2009
I have been using outlook 2007 for about a year now and developed an issue that i was wondering if you could help with.
When i flag an email, it creates two identical tasks. when I clear the flag, it clears the flag for both tasks. So if i have three tasks, it says that i have 6.
HELP! it is stressing me out :)
thanks!
stefan
Marilyn said on June 18, 2009
I drag and drop emails onto calendar when an invite has not been sent. It’s very useful except when the email has an attachment. This ‘drag and drop’ feature doesn’t move attachments to the calendar.
johnny walker said on June 22, 2009
You can drag with the right mouse button instead of the left and that way you get a popup which allows you to choose to include the entire email as an attachment to the calendar entry (attachments included).
mauricio said on June 26, 2009
How can you add destinator in an e-mail by draging contacts fromo your contacts tab? or a group of contacts
Anonymous said on September 11, 2009
In previous versions of Outlook when you dragged an email to your calendar it would also populate the email addresses from the email to the Invitee field. In MS Outlook 07 it is NOT doing this. Anyone know if there is a setting that enable this to occur again?
Anonymous said on November 16, 2009
JOHNNY WALKER!! This is awesome, I knew there had to be something like this!!
Anonymous said on December 14, 2009
How do you delete the email from your inbox after you drag it to the taks bar? If you try and delete the email from your inbox it also deletes it from your task list
Anonymous said on December 26, 2009
Great help.I am sure to save time in the future since I follow the above advice.
Anonymous said on January 16, 2010
so how do i assign a task to a co-worker with a specific time that i can track and make sure it gets done.
Bhong said on February 4, 2010
I want to drag my sent emails out onto a file folder , so my customer service reps can see my emails. Is there a way for me to drag it out onto a file folder which is networked , and than customize it so it doesnt just display the subject lines as the name but display the “to person” or “email address” on the file name?
Anonymous said on March 27, 2010
It depends on the Exchange Server you are using. For example, sometimes on a personal account at home, the item is deleted. But from an organization with a 2007 server it stays in the tasks even when you delete it from your inbox.
General said on December 13, 2010
Love this. Thanks! Just one thing. When I drag and drop just a message (no attachement) to the calendar, the full text of the email message is moved directly into body/notes section of appointment. But when I do the cool right-click drag and drop WITH attachement the body section of appointment just has an envelope icon visible, which must then be clicked to expand and see conteents. Is there any way to get the body of the email and the attachements to go directly into the appointment body field, rather than just as an icon that has to be clicked in order to view? Thanks!
Rob Rogers said on December 14, 2010
Unfortunately, I don’t think so. I will do some playing around with it and see what happens.
Tony said on January 11, 2011
after draging an email into my task colum the task items get delete if i send the email into my delete folder?
newcomp79 said on March 21, 2011
Appointment notices sent in email – as calendar icons – used to be dragged directly to calendar view. Doesn’t seem to work for MSO 7?
Dragging the email containing the appointment to the calendar view saves it to the calendar, but does not include the correct time or date automatically.
Any way to drag and drop a forwarded appointment icon sent in an email directly to calendar view?
Dave Randall said on October 11, 2011
How can I use drag+drop to create distribution lists?