Outlook 2007: Use Drag and Drop to Create Tasks, Appointments and Contacts from Existing Emails

Contributor Icon Contributed by shamanstears Date Icon March 15, 2009  
Tag Icon 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
    What a huge time saver - if only we had Microsoft 2007 in our district!!! I work for DoDDS in Europe.....
  • Stefan
    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
    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
    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).
  • divatech95
    JOHNNY WALKER!! This is awesome, I knew there had to be something like this!!
  • mauricio
    How can you add destinator in an e-mail by draging contacts fromo your contacts tab? or a group of contacts
  • snangle
    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?
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