Microsoft Project 2013: The Missing Manual

Integrating Project and Outlook

Outlook is Microsoft’s email workhorse, but email is only one of the ways that Outlook and Project work as a team. When you’re in Project, you can email Project files without jumping over to Outlook to do so. But because both programs can store lists of tasks and names, you can also export Project tasks to Outlook and vice versa. You can even use your Outlook address book to build your resource list in Project. This section explains how to use these features.

Adding Project Tasks to Outlook

If the old saying “Out of sight, out of mind” is all too true in your case, you can keep important Project tasks in sight by adding them (one at a time) to your Outlook Task List. By adding a reminder to these Outlook tasks, you can really stay on top of things. All you need to do is copy and paste. But before you get too attached to this approach, you should know that, when you add Project tasks to Outlook, you have copies of those tasks in two places—and they aren’t linked. So if you mark a task as done in Outlook, it isn’t automatically updated in Project, and vice versa.

If you decide to add tasks to Outlook as reminders, here are the steps:

1. In a task-oriented view like Gantt Chart, select the Task Name cell for the task you want to copy to Outlook, and then press Ctrl+C. (Or right-click the cell and choose Copy Cell.)

   You can select only one task at a time. Project copies the task’s name to the Clipboard.

2. In Outlook, display the Tasks list.

   Click Tasks at the bottom ...