Using Outlook to Remind You of Tasks in Your Project

After you've completed your project plan, you can use Outlook's reminder capabilities to view and set reminders for meetings, events, and project tasks. Project 2002 changed the location of many of these features, however, so accessing them takes a bit more work than it did in Project 2000. To add an alert and reminder to your Outlook tasks, you'll first need to add the Set Reminder toolbar button to your Project 2002 toolbar. This button isn't visible by default in Project 2002. To add the toolbar button, select View, Toolbars, Customize. Select the Commands tab to display Figure 35.3. Select Tools from the Categories list. Select Set Reminder from the Commands list. Drag the Reminder button to one of your existing toolbars and release the mouse. Click Close to save your changes.

Figure 35.3. You can add the Reminder button to your toolbar.

To display reminders in your Outlook Task List before the start date of your project tasks, use the following steps:

1. Enter Gantt Chart view on your project by choosing View, Gantt Chart.

2. Select the task you want a reminder for. To select multiple tasks, use the Ctrl or Shift key.

3. Click the Set Reminder button on your toolbar to display Figure 35.4.

   Figure 35.4. Set a reminder to display before the start or end of a task.

   

4. Choose the reminder options you need for the selected tasks.

5. Click OK.

NOTE

If you try to set a reminder on a task that has already started, Project warns you that the reminder will not display.

You can view these reminders at any time by examining your Outlook Task List. Any task added to your Task List through Project has a category of the Project filename. So, if you name your Project file Network Infrastructure Upgrade, any reminders you add to your Task List from your Project file will have the category Network Infrastructure Upgrade.