How to remove duplicate tasks in Outlook?

Sometimes duplicate tasks occur in Microsoft Outlook, which crowd together and make us tough to pick out the right task at a glance. In this article, we will introduce a couple of methods to remove duplicate tasks: one is to sort tasks by subject and then manually select duplicate tasks and delete them, and the other is to remove duplicate tasks with the Kutools for Outlook’s Delete Duplicate Tasks utility.

Remove duplicate tasks manually in Outlook

Remove duplicate tasks with Kutools for Outlook with several clicking

Remove duplicate tasks in Outlook:

To quickly remove all duplicate tasks in Outlook, Kutools for Outlook's Duplicate Tasks feature can do you a favor.

Kutools for Outlook: with more than 20+ handy Excel add-ins, free to try with no limitation in 60 days. Download and try the free trial now!

Remove duplicate tasks manually in Outlook

This method will walk you through removing duplicate tasks manually in Microsoft Outlook, and please do as following:

1. Open a task folder which you will remove duplicate tasks from in the Task view.

2. Display all tasks in List view:

In Outlook 2010 and later version, please click the Change view > Detailed on the View tab.
In Outlook 2007, please click the View > Current View > Detailed List.

3. Modify current view:

In Outlook 2007, please click the View > Current View > Customize Current View.
In Outlook 2010 and later version, please click the View Settings button on the View tab.

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4. In the Advanced View Settings dialog box, please click the Sort button, and in the popped out Sort dialog box, select the Subject from the Sort items by drop down list, then click OK button, see screenshot:

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5. Then a warning dialog box will pop up. Please click the Yes button in it.

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6. And all the tasks have been sorted alphabetically, then compare the adjacent tasks, and manually select duplicate tasks one by one by holding the Ctrl key, see screenshot:.

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7. After selecting the duplicate tasks, you just need to press Delete key to delete them at once.

Note: If you select any task folder except the To-do List folder, you just need to sort tasks by subject with clicking the Subject at the column header directly. See screenshot:

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Remove duplicate tasks with Kutools for Outlook

Sometimes, tasks are different even they have same subject. Although tasks are sorted by subject, it’s tough to pick out duplicate ones exactly. Here I will introduce you the Kutools for Outlook’s Delete Duplicate Tasks utility, which can help you remove completely same tasks with several clicks.

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1. Shift to the Tasks view, and click to open a task folder which you will remove duplicate tasks from.

2. Click the Kutools > Duplicate Tasks. See screen shot:

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3. In the popping up Duplicate Tasks dialog box, please check the Completely same option, and then click the Delete button.

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Note: If you want to remove duplicate tasks with only part of same criteria, such as subject, body, start date, please check the Part of same, and then check the criteria (Same subject, Same body, or Same start date) base on your needs.

4. Then a dialog box pops out and tells you how many duplicate tasks have been removed. Click the OK button in the dialog box.

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