If you use Lightning (0.7) you’ve probably had the frustration of entering some tasks in to your to-do list and then not being able to find them. It’s really quite simple to locate them, though the solution is not obvious always at first.
Save Tasks Locally
The first thing to note is that tasks have to be saved in a local calendar. With the current version of the Google Provider for Lightning, you cannot save tasks to a Google Calendar. So if you’re trying to figure out how to find the tasks that you entered in your Google calendar, the answer is simple. They just aren’t there. This post only covers tasks saved in a local calendar.
Switching Modes
When you installed Lightning on Thunderbird you probably noticed that there are two buttons used to switch between Mail and Calendar modes in the bottom left of the screen.
It’s quite natural to look for your missing tasks in calendar mode, but only tasks that you have set a start and end date for will appear in the calendar and then only in the week, multiweek and month views. Tasks do not appear in the day view.
Tasks of a general to-do list nature which don’t necessarily have a date set cannot appear in the calendar and there’s no obvious way to find them.
You have to switch to Mail mode and then press Ctrl+D [NOW F11 in v0.8]. This will bring up the Today Pane on the right hand side of your Thurderbird windows. Alternatively, you can go to the View menu >> Layout >> Today Pane.
When in Mail mode you can easily toggle between showing you tasks by using Ctrl+D [NOW F11 in v0.8].
Quickly Adding New Tasks
Now when you need to add a task, just double click on a blank area of the Today Pane and a New Task dialogue will appear. Proceed as normal and don’t forget to set the calendar for the task to one that is local.
Lightning 0.8 To Add Task View
The next version of Lightning, 0.8 will make access to tasks more intuitive by including as task pane as is found in the stand alone version, Sunbird.
[UPDATE] Lightning 0.8 was released on 7 April 08 read more about task in v 0.8 here
Filed under: Support Articles, Thunderbird , lightning, lightning 0.7, missing tasks, mozilla, task management, Thunderbird, to do list
Thanks a whole lot for saving me time trying to figure out where my tasks went.
I’m REALLY disappointed I can’t save these tasks for easy access online, which is kinda the whole point of having your desktop calendar sync with the net. I hope this is added in the near future.
Do you know any way I can integrate Lightning and online access to both calendar and tasks even if I have to install a PHP app on my web server?
Thanks — Christoph.
i have already tried doing this, i made a calendar called ” tasks” and it’s local, it still does not appear on it under ‘ calendar ‘ .
@brennan, in order for tasks to appear in the calendar they have to have a specific start or due date.
For everyone who has been having the problem of new tasks immediately disappearing, make sure you have a non-remote calendar selected when you make the task. As it says above, you can’t sync tasks with Google Calendar (that’s what my remote calendars are linked to), so if you have a remote calendar selected as the active calendar, Thunderbird just won’t do anything and delete the task. Make a local calendar for tasks and hope that the feature is added later on.
@Charlie
Absolutely, this is what I do. The trick is to make sure that when adding a task you assign it to your local calender.
I had a look at Lightning 0.8 Alpha and it has improved. I took some screenshots before uninstalling it and will write about here soon.
The 0.8 Alpha doesn’t work with the Google provider though so I couldn’t tell if anything had improved on that front.
Hi, I hope you can help me: I have just updated to Lightning 0.8, but cannot find a way to change the directory where to put my automatic local backup of the calendar: any ideas?
Many thanks!
p.s.
me again, found the way to do it, just installed the updated “automatic backup” facility, in case you are interested it is here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/3740
thanks anyway!
Hi Paola, thanks for sharing the back up tip, I’ll check that out.
Found a solution to task disappearing from local calendar, ‘Home’. Somehow I had inadvertently checked (under Show) overdue tasks, so all the new stuff was filtered out.
Just click ‘Show..All’ and voila, back on that air..