Create Outlook Tasks Quickly with TaskDaddy

TaskDaddy is a fantastic, yet amazingly simple, Outlook Task creating program that allows you to create simple reminders in Outlook using single line commands. All you have to do is remember some very basic command syntaxes or formulas, which are easy to learn, and you will be creating reminders in a jiffy.

TaskDaddy has both a graphical user interface and a command line interface. If you launch TaskDaddy by double clicking on the executable file, you will get the GUI interface where you will be inputting your task commands.

For example, typing this:

results in this

As you can easily infer from the screenshot, preceding certain characters before your text enables you to assign them to definite fields.

• @ is for category name
• # for due date
• : for body of the task 
• ! or ? for assigning priority.

The subject line does not require to be preceded by any special character, and the priority (!) is optional. Sometimes, even the colon (:) is optional if you place the due date between the subject line and the body; the due date acting as an interrupt between the two.

It is also possible to assign multiple categories for the same task, such as by typing @Errand @Home will assign the task to category “Errand” and “Home”. Another way to specify multiple categories is using the comma (,) symbol. So this can be also input as @Errand,Home. Notice that there is no space before or after the comma. Also no space is allowed in category name.

The order of the task attributes such as subject, body, category, due date doesn’t matter. It can be placed in any order as long as they are preceded by the correct symbol.

As mentioned beforehand, TaskDaddy has a command line tool. In addition to task attributes, the command line tool has an extra option that enables you to specify a text file containing a list of tasks  using the switch /f filename.txt.

Bonus Tip

Download Run Manager and add a shortcut for TaskDaddy. I used “td”.

Now I can execute and add Outlook tasks right from Windows Run box without opening either TaskDaddy or Outlook. How’s that?