3 Easy Ways to Turn an Email into a Calendar Event

Microsoft 365 Life Hacks > Organization > 3 Easy Ways to Turn an Email into a Calendar Event

November 09, 2022

No matter how hard you try to keep it organized, your email inbox can quickly turn into a to-do list of unopened or flagged-for-later messages. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could set a reminder to circle back to an item—without having to search your inbox? You can!

3 Easy Ways to Turn an Email into a Calendar Event – Microsoft 365 (1)

It’s easy to convert emails to calendar events, making it much simpler to get through your to-do list. Using this handy calendar function can help you keep events and dates straight without the extra effort of mentally sorting things out each day.

3 Easy Ways to Turn an Email into a Calendar Event – Microsoft 365 (2)

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If you’ve synched your mobile apps with your desktop programs, you can choose to have notifications pop up on your desktop as well as your phone, which lets you instantly see what’s coming up today, tomorrow, or next week. Read on to learn three easy ways to create an email calendar event.

Drag the message to your calendar icon. The Outlook desktop program is designed with your busy schedule in mind. There are functions built into the program that help you manage everything from your inbox to spam messages to your daily calendar. Synching your everyday to-do list with your Outlook account can help you keep everything in order and make your day go smoother. Creating an email calendar event is as easy as dragging a message to the calendar icon in the lower-lefthand corner of your Outlook window.
Once you’ve placed the email in your calendar, a new window will pop up for you to fill in the details. You can include the time of the event, how long it will last, the location, and when you’d like notifications to pop up. The event will also save the original message, so you have access to all the information you need, like addresses, specific notes, and more.
Reply with the Meeting button. You can reply to a message to convert an Outlook email to a calendar event that includes the sender and everyone else on the feed. You might use the reply with meeting feature from your personal email address if you’re setting up a phone call or lunch with friends. Sending a reply message to create a meeting adds the event to your personal calendar, and either automatically adds it to your recipients’ calendar or provides them with an option to do so.
Similar to dragging your message to the calendar icon, the reply with meeting feature lets you fill in pertinent details for the event. Because you’re sending the event as an email, you can also create a note with additional information for your recipients upon receipt of the message. One feature that’s helpful when sending a message to people in different parts of the country is identifying the time zone of the event. You can click the time zones option to choose the time zone from which the meeting originates.
Create a Task. The mobile app and browser versions of Outlook make it easy to create a task that can be managed with the Microsoft To Do app and integrated into your mobile notifications, which helps keep you up to date when you’re going about your day. Your To Do app makes it easy to manage everything in one place, without having to multi-task in one app. When creating a task from an email, the email subject line will auto-populate as the name of the task, and then you can adjust the task settings by setting a due date, creating reminders, and including notes.

3 Easy Ways to Turn an Email into a Calendar Event – Microsoft 365 (4)

“Wouldn’t it be nice if you could set a reminder to circle back around to an item without feeling like you have to search your inbox?”

Bonus: Create a Gmail event. You can easily create an event to add to your Google Calendar for those who don’t use Outlook and use Gmail instead. It might take a little bit of searching to find the option to create an event, but it doesn’t take too many extra steps.Just open the email, click the three vertical dots in the bar at the top of the email that have icons for trashing, archiving, or moving the email. The event will populate notes from the email message where the event originated. You can customize the event with times, dates, and notifications. The original recipients on the email feed will be included as guests for the event, but you can easily add them using the “Add guests” field. Additionally, Google allows you to modify guest permissions, so they can change the event and invite others.

Keep your calendar straight by converting Outlook emails to calendar events. You’ll enjoy custom notifications, so you can more easily organize your days. Be sure to check out other email organizing hacks, like how to create eye-catching signatures, or when to use encryption, how to manage spam, change your email address, and more.