Outlook: hide delayed tasks

There are certain tasks which I need to do, but I can’t do them until some date/time.

What I want is to put such tasks into my task list, but I don’t want them to be visible until their start date. I don’t want to put them into my calendar, I can do them after day X, but don’t know when exactly I will find time for them, so my task list is a better fit.

So the first step is to actually specify a start date for such a future task and then set up a filter on your outlook task list to hide delayed tasks and this is a little bit trickier:

1. Click on “Arrange By” on top of your task list and select “View Settings”
2. Click “Filter” button and select “Advanced” tab; by default it filters in current tasks (where Completion Date doesn’t exist AND Completion Flag doesn’t exist)
3. We also want to filter in tasks with Start Date “on or before” Today, so you click on a “Field” button under Define Criteria, select a Start Date there, specify “on or before” in Condition and type “Today” in the Value text box
4. Unfortunately this filters out all tasks without start date, apparently we want to show current task OR tasks without Start Date, so you again add Start Date field and pick up “doesn’t exist” Condition from a drop down there 
5. This is it, enjoy, delayed tasks are filtered out now

(here is how your filter should look like)

Note that conditions from 2nd and 3rd points are actually appended to resulting query using AND logic, while 3rd and 4th conditions should use OR logic. Actually, I thought that you can’t specify this logic in Advanced tab since all conditions are ANDed by default, so initially I hacked my custom query in SQL tab (poor me, those SQL queries look pretty ugly, you can check an auto-generated one).

Funny enough, but Advanced filter is so advanced that it understands 3rd and 4th conditions should be ORed. So actually you don’t need to mess around with a SQL query.