Microsoft To Do gets a rough time online, and most of it isn't deserved. It's free, it's already sitting on your work laptop, and it does the plain stuff well.
The problem shows up on Saturday in the hardware store aisle, when you're trying to remember the size of the bolt and your list is back on a laptop in the office.
What it gets right
Start with the good part, because there's a lot of it. You get lists, due dates, reminders, repeating tasks, notes, and files, and none of it costs anything beyond the Microsoft account you already have for work.
My Day is the nicest idea in there. Every morning it starts you with an empty page and offers you things off your lists, so today is a choice you make instead of a pile you inherited. Plenty of apps that charge money don't do that as well.
The Outlook part people miss
Here's the bit that surprises people. Your tasks and your Outlook tasks are the same tasks. Flag an email in Outlook and it turns up in To Do, and a task you add in To Do turns up in Outlook.
If your job runs through Outlook all day, that's worth a lot, because the thing your boss just emailed you becomes a task without you retyping it. Nothing gets copied and there's nothing to keep matched up.
The ceiling
Now the catch. To Do lives where Microsoft lives, which means Outlook, Teams, Windows, and its own apps on your phone and the web.
Step outside that and it's gone. It isn't in the chat you have open with ChatGPT or Claude. It isn't in Slack, if that's where your team actually talks. It isn't going to answer you in the car. And you can't just say a task out loud to a speaker in your kitchen and expect it to land.
The ones that never get in
That gap matters more than it sounds, because of when you remember things. Hardly anybody thinks of a task while sitting in Outlook. You think of it in the hardware store, on the drive back, or in the middle of a Slack thread about something else.
So the tasks that reach To Do are the ones you were already at your desk for. The rest live in your head until they fall out of it, and after a few months the list feels thin and you stop trusting it1.
Where to go from here
If your whole day happens inside Outlook and Teams, stay. Nothing else is going to beat free and already there, and you should spend your time on something else.
If you keep losing things in the aisle, look for a list that turns up in the places you actually are, and then test it in the worst moment you can find2. That's what we built 42 Todo! for. It answers in ChatGPT and Claude, in Slack, on your phone, and out loud in the car, and it's the same list every time.
Frequently asked questions
Is Microsoft To Do free?
- Yes. It comes with a Microsoft account, which you probably already have if you use Outlook or Windows at work. There is no paid tier of To Do itself.
Can I share a Microsoft To Do list?
- Yes. You can invite people to a list, and everyone sees the same one. The other person needs a Microsoft account, which is the usual snag with family and friends who are not in that world.
What's the difference between Microsoft To Do and Microsoft Planner?
- To Do is your own list. Planner is for a team, with work assigned to people and boards to look at. If nobody else is waiting on the thing, To Do is the right one, and if the whole team needs to see it, that's Planner's job.
Why do my tasks show up in Outlook?
- Because they're the same tasks. To Do and Outlook Tasks are two windows onto one list, so a flagged email and a typed task end up in the same place. Nothing was copied, which is why nothing can drift out of step.
Footnotes
- Most tasks die before they reach your list what happens to the tasks that never make it in. ↩
- How to pick a to-do list app the four things worth checking, and the test that settles it. ↩