How to Quickly Count All Tasks by Status in Your Outlook

Tasks can have five statuses – “Not Started”, “In Progress”, “Completed”, “Waiting for someone else” and “Deferred”. If you want to rapidly count all tasks by status, you can use the way introduced in this article.

Outlook supports users to assign status to the tasks or flagged items. There are five statuses – respectively “Not Started”, “In Progress”, “Completed”, “Waiting for someone else” and “Deferred”. Perhaps you have a great amount of tasks in your Outlook and they are in different statuses. Now, if you would like to count all the tasks by status, you can use the following way.

Quickly Count All Tasks by Status

1. First off, launch Outlook VBA editor by referring to “How to Run VBA Code in Your Outlook“.
2. Then, in the VBA editor, enable the reference to “MS Excel Object Library” as well as “MS Scripting Runtime” according to “How to Add an Object Library Reference in VBA“.
3. Next, copy the following code into an unused module.

Dim objDictionary As New Scripting.Dictionary

Sub CountTasksByStatus()
    Dim objStore As Outlook.Store
    Dim objOutlookFile As Outlook.Folder
    Dim objFolder As Outlook.Folder
    Dim objExcelApp As Excel.Application
    Dim objExcelWorkbook As Excel.Workbook
    Dim objExcelWorksheet As Excel.Worksheet
    Dim varStatuses As Variant
    Dim varTaskCounts As Variant
    Dim i As Integer
    Dim nLastRow As Integer
 
    'Count by Dictionary
    Set objDictionary = CreateObject("Scripting.Dictionary")
  
    'Process All Outlook data files
    For Each objStore In Application.Session.Stores
        Set objOutlookFile = objStore.GetRootFolder
        For Each objFolder In objOutlookFile.Folders
            If objFolder.DefaultItemType = olTaskItem Then
               Call ProcessTaskFolders(objFolder)
            End If
        Next
    Next
 
    'Export the counts to an Excel worksheet
    Set objExcelApp = CreateObject("Excel.Application")
    objExcelApp.Visible = True
    Set objExcelWorkbook = objExcelApp.Workbooks.Add
    Set objExcelWorksheet = objExcelWorkbook.Sheets(1)
 
    With objExcelWorksheet
        .Cells(1, 1) = "Status"
        .Cells(1, 1).Font.Bold = True
        .Cells(1, 2) = "Task Count"
        .Cells(1, 2).Font.Bold = True
    End With
 
    varStatuses = objDictionary.Keys
    varTaskCounts = objDictionary.Items
 
    For i = LBound(varStatuses) To UBound(varStatuses)
        nLastRow = objExcelWorksheet.Range("A" & objExcelWorksheet.Rows.Count).End(xlUp).Row + 1
        With objExcelWorksheet
            .Cells(nLastRow, 1) = varStatuses(i)
            .Cells(nLastRow, 2) = varTaskCounts(i)
        End With
    Next
 
    objExcelWorksheet.Columns("A:B").AutoFit
End Sub

Sub ProcessTaskFolders(ByVal objCurFolder As Outlook.Folder)
    Dim objTask As Outlook.TaskItem
    Dim strStatus As String
    Dim objSubfolder As Outlook.Folder
 
    'Count tasks by status
    For Each objTask In objCurFolder.Items
        Select Case objTask.Status
               Case olTaskNotStarted
                    strStatus = "Not Started"
 
                    If objDictionary.Exists(strStatus) Then
                       objDictionary(strStatus) = objDictionary(strStatus) + 1
                    Else
                       objDictionary.Add strStatus, 1
                    End If
               Case olTaskInProgress
                    strStatus = "In Progress"
 
                    If objDictionary.Exists(strStatus) Then
                       objDictionary(strStatus) = objDictionary(strStatus) + 1
                    Else
                       objDictionary.Add strStatus, 1
                    End If
               Case olTaskComplete
                    strStatus = "Completed"
 
                    If objDictionary.Exists(strStatus) Then
                       objDictionary(strStatus) = objDictionary(strStatus) + 1
                    Else
                       objDictionary.Add strStatus, 1
                    End If
               Case olTaskWaiting
                    strStatus = "Waiting on someone else"
 
                    If objDictionary.Exists(strStatus) Then
                       objDictionary(strStatus) = objDictionary(strStatus) + 1
                    Else
                       objDictionary.Add strStatus, 1
                    End If
               Case olTaskDeferred
                    strStatus = "Deferred"
 
                    If objDictionary.Exists(strStatus) Then
                       objDictionary(strStatus) = objDictionary(strStatus) + 1
                    Else
                       objDictionary.Add strStatus, 1
                    End If
         End Select
    Next
 
    'Process all subfolders recursively
    If objCurFolder.Folders.Count > 0 Then
       For Each objSubfolder In objCurFolder.Folders
           Call ProcessTaskFolders(objSubfolder)
       Next
    End If
End Sub

4. After that, click into the first subroutine and press “F5” key.
5. At once, when macro completes, a new Excel worksheet will display, like the screenshot below. It contains the counts of tasks in different statuses.

Beware of Pitfalls around Outlook

There are a great amount of risks surrounding Outlook, including viruses, human errors, software faults as well as hardware failures, etc. Therefore, if don’t want to lose your valuable Outlook data, you have to keep cautious all the time. Simply put, you should never download unknown attachments or suspicious links in the emails. Besides, if possible, it is advisable to keep a remarkable Outlook fix utility, like DataNumen Outlook Repair, in vicinity, instead of totally relying on the inbox repair tool.

Author Introduction:

Shirley Zhang is a data recovery expert in DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including recover sql and outlook repair software products. For more information visit www.datanumen.com