Mac – Tasks not appearing in Mac Outlook 2011

microsoft-outlook-2011office-for-mactasks

My current workplace uses Macs and my old workplaces used Windows. In my old workplaces I heavily used Outlook's Task functionality to manage my workload.

I understand that the Task functionality in Outlook 2011 for Mac is heavily limited so I was very pleased to find this useful "how-to" on making the most of Tasks.

My problem is that my tasks don't appear in the Task folder, or anywhere else for that matter. Even if I search for a the title of a task I've recently found I still can't find them.

After some Googling I found this forum thread that suggests it may be a problem with the Outlook database, which points to a Microsoft KB.

So I went through all of the recommended steps on rebuilding/ adding a new identity using the "Microsoft Database Utility" – the theory being that if I create a new identity I can test the task creation using a "blank slate" identity.

When I change the default identity to my newly created identity using the Microsoft Database Utility (have to restart the computer) Task creation still doesn't work.

Any ideas appreciated, I really miss the task functionality in Outlook 2010 for Windows.

Best Answer

You may have already found this answer from Microsoft, but in short - you need to enable Spotlight search. Outlook uses OS X's built in search engine for its own search, and apparently also for displaying Tasks. In short, a Task won't appear until it's been indexed.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2473212

You may have to rebuild Spotlight's index, more info on how to do that here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2409

This worked for me.