Outlook Date Magic!

Diane Poremsky at the excellent Outlook Tips website just issued a timely (geddit?!) reminder of the power of Microsoft Outlook's date fields in her daily tip bulletin. If you're not yet subscribed to Diane's Outlook tips by email service, join now by emailing from here.

Diane's tip highlighted the way that Outlook intelligently deciphers your date entries (say, in a task Due Date field). So, if you enter "13", Outlook will assume this means the 13th day of the current month. You can also use text entries like today, tomorrow, 3d (3 days from now), next Monday, 2d before Christmas (2 days before Christmas), Halloween+4w (4 weeks after Halloween), New Years Day, Boxing Day, and even Valentine's Day.

If anyone has the definitive list of supported text entries, do let me know. I've discovered these by trial and error but I suspect there are several more that Outlook understands.

You can also enter a different Due Date and Start Date in a task simply by clicking and dragging over the date range in the date drop down box. Outlook puts the earliest date you highlight in the Start Date field and the latest date in the Due Date field. Magic!