This has been a long time coming! Even though Gmail was cool I always felt the need of a task manager that’s built into Gmail to make things easier for Gmailers. I’ve tried quite a lot of other Task Management programs, both online and on the desktop, but nothing is sticky enough to move all my tasks from my Google Calendar to those applications. I pretty much gave up on all those task management programs.

It comes as a bit of an early holidays surprise" to see task management capabilities on Gmail. Even though it might not be the ultimate Task Management application/plugin ever, Gmail Task Manager comes with a convenience if you use Gmail a lot (I do).

Follow these steps to turn on task management on Gmail,

Step-1: Navigate to Gmail Settings

Sign-in to your Gmail account and click on the “Settings” link at the top of the page.

Step-2: Navigate to Gmail Labs

Click on the “Labs” tab.

Step-3: Enable Gmail Tasks

You should be able to see “Tasks” on the top of the list. Click on the “Enable” option and hit the “Save Changes” button at the bottom of the page.

Gmail will reload and now you should be able to handle tasks on your Gmail page.

Step-4: Enable keyboard shortcuts

To efficiently make use of Gmail Tasks you have to turn on the keyboard shortcuts.  On the “General” tab locate the “Keyboard shortcuts:” section and click on the “Keyboard shortcuts on” option and then hit the “Save Changes” button.

Now, since you have your keyboard shortcuts turned on you can make use of these shortcuts to make your life easier with Gmail Tasks,

• Create a new task – Press the ENTER key
• Indent a task – Press the TAB key
• Un-indent a task – Press the SHIFT and TAB keys
• Move a task up – Press the CTRL and UP arrow keys
• Move a task down – Press the CTRL and DOWN arrow keys
• Switch between the main view and the detailed task view – Press the SHIFT and ENTER keys
• Add selected email to your tasks – Press SHIFT and T keys when you have the email selected or when you have the email open

The cool thing about Gmail tasks is that you can convert an email into a task. If you are on the Gmail home page then you can select the emails that you want to be converted as a task or if you have the email open you can click on the “More Actions” dropdown and then click on the “Add to tasks” menu item.

Gmail will add that email to your tasks and will open up a Tasks window.

You can use the buttons on the right side to add/remove tasks and to mange your task lists.

You can use the Actions button on the left to view/clear completed tasks, indent and move tasks up or down.

If you have any questions/comments on this please let us know in comments.