How to Print your Outlook Calendar with the MYN Task List
Feb 10, 2011
I know you may be eager to obtain a sexy new smartphone, tablet, or netbook, but if the extent of your mobility is inside an office building, say between your desk and a conference room, you can often get by with much less. When I worked in a large corporate office environment years ago, I found I was quite successful with merely printing out my Outlook MYN task list and appointments for the day on one page and taking that to meetings. In my experience, it trumped the complications of a handheld; I found using a full-sized sheet of paper preferable to navigating through the tiny screens on a handheld during a meeting.
If you want to do this, you may wonder how to print your calendar and task list together on one page. Outlook lets you do this. It’s especially easy in Outlook 2003, but a bit harder to set up in Outlook 2007 and 2010. Unfortunately there is not an easy way to do it Outlook 2011. Here are the steps for Windows.
In Outlook 2003, simply open your Calendar with the TaskPad shown, enter Day view by clicking the Day button above the Calendar, and then use the File menu to print the view. That’s all there is to it.
In Outlook 2007 and 2010, Microsoft changed the tasks source that prints by default to the Daily Task list, which is not useful to MYN users. So you need to change that before you print. Here’s how.
- Go to the Calendar, enter Day view by clicking the Day button above the Calendar.
- In Outlook 2007 choose File, Page Setup, and from submenu choose Daily Style (now skip to step four below).
- In Outlook 2010 go to the File Tab and choose Print. In the list at the right ensure Daily Style is chosen under Settings. Then click the Print Options button just above the Settings list. In the Print Dialog box that opens, right in the middle is a button that says Page Setup; select that.
- In both versions, in the Print Setup dialog box that opens (see below), in the Format tab, find the Options block on the lower left. In that block, the second item down is labeled Tasks. From the dropdown to the right of Tasks choose To-Do Bar.
Next, 2007 users now just click the Print button; 2010 users will have to click OK first and then Print on the next screen.
That’s it. You shouldn’t have to select To-Do Bar again; that setting should be saved.
You may also want to play with other formatting options, such as printing out a week of appointments with your tasks (do the same steps as above, but choose Weekly Style). You can also go to the Paper Tab in the Page Setup dialog to choose Portrait vs. Landscape printing.
wonderful
thank you for writing .
“The One Minute To-Do List” is such a clear guide to making sense of madness and calm out of chaos. Thank you Mr Linenberger.
I tried this but the High Priority and Medium Priority task are collapsed so I can’t see them. Any thoughts?
Rene: if they are collapsed in your To-Do Bar, they will be collapsed in your print. So uncollapse them before you print.
Michael.
I tried this but it won’t print the tasks that don’t have a Due Date. Any thoughts?
I tried this but it won’t print tasks that don’t have a Due Date. Is there any way around this?
Shelly. It works for me. My “none” dated tasks show up fine in the print. BTW, What Outlook version are you using?
Michael
2010 does not seem to allow the user to sort the tasks under the to-do tasks, any advice on how this might be accomplished? Thks.
Jay
Not sure what you mean. In the To-Do List view, Just click on the header of the column and it sorts. Do you mean something else?
Michael
Michael, how can I create “To-Do” items in my calendar for daily events without them appearing in my “Tasks” list? Is this possible? I use the “Tasks” as long-term project tracking in OUTLOOK and would like to be able for my “To-Do” daily items to carry over daily if I do not complete them. Suggestions?
TJ,
No easy way to do that since the Calendar view of tasks (called daily tasks list) offers no filtering. A harder way to do it would be to assign a category to all project tasks and then set the To-Do bar task list filter to only display those. but even then, the project tasks will show up in the calendar. And there is no way to set an MYN view in the Calendar view of tasks, so it won’t be useful for our system. So, probably no way to use that “daily tasks” list, sorry!
Michael
As far as I can see this only works for sarehd calendars (which everybody can see and can turn op in google searches). Thunderbird + lightning can open and update the calendar.
I am having a problem printing the to-do list. I follow your instructions but the options>tasks bar is grayed out. In “define print styles” I CAN select “to-do bar” in the options>tasks bar. But when I print directly from that screen the “to-do bar” does not print, just the calendar. If I then go back to the page setup>daily style print screen, the tasks bar is still grayed out. Any ideas?
Elizabeth,
What Outlook version are you using?
Michael
Oh, I’m sorry, it’s 2007.
Elizabeth
Okay. I just tested again and the 2007 steps above seem to work. I wonder, do you have multiple Calendar folders in your Outlook? I suspect tasks will only be available if you have selected the default calendar folder. If you do have multiple, try selecting other calendars in the My Calendars pane near top of left side, before printing. But if that’s not it, I do not know what could be holding it up, sorry!
Michael
Thanks Michael, that was the problem. I selected the default and it printed just fine. However, it did not print the underlining in the top to-do items…any way you know to fix this?
Elizabeth
That’s interesting, mine does not show underlines either, I never noticed that! Not sure why, and do not know how to change that.
Michael
Useful info. Thanks.