Transfer Microsoft To Do tasks from one account to another

Using Outlook Desktop App

While looking for ways to easily copy Microsoft To Do tasks from one account to another I came up with this simple solution, which requires the Outlook Desktop App:

1. Creating target lists
   Create the necessary lists in the target account inside Microsoft To Do.

2. Adding a new account
   Go to File\Info and add both accounts. The one from which the tasks should be transferred from and the one to which the tasks should be transferred to. This will require a restart of Outlook.

3. Copy tasks via Outlook
   If the lists haven’t been synchronized yet, wait for it to complete. Once it’s complete you can copy the tasks from one to another via ctrl+c/v.

4. Check the target account
   Depending on the number of tasks it may take some time until they are synchronized, but it will happen and with all properties. This includes completion state, recurrence and categories.

Info: If the same list name exists in multiple accounts, the account name is added after the list name.

If you have signed up with a non Microsoft mail address, jd@example.com, you may need to follow Charles Longer solution:

Quoted comment One extra tweak I had to make: one of my accounts was @gmail instead of @outlook, so when I added it to my local Outlook, imap didn’t show any of my tasks. So I went into account.microsoft.com, added an @outlook alias, and then added the account into Outlook via the alias. Tasks showed immediately and I was able to pick up the copy/paste from there. (Technically I just highlighted all tasks and dragged them into the new account.

Alternatives

Backing up /Restoring Microsoft To Do Tasks

While looking for a solution I stumbled across the following post: Backup / migrate Microsoft To Do tasks with PowerShell and Microsoft Graph

I wanted to use this approach to transfer the tasks but was blocked because of the tenant administrator didn’t grant the required permissions.

Using Power Automate

Quote from How can I import tasks in Microsoft To Do ? (urgent): You can do this with Flow, but only for yourself, there is no bulk import tool that can do this. But there is a Create to do flow action that you can loop through from a CSV file that you feed to the flow via OneDrive.

Import in Outlook via .csv File

Quote from How can I import tasks in Microsoft To Do ? (urgent):

To do this, you must be signed in to Outlook on a desktop – as far as I know this will not work on the web version. On the bottom left there is a tab to navigate to the “Tasks” page – click on this. If you are signed in to the correct MS account, your To Do list should be synced to this page. Find the list you want to upload to, and make sure there is at least one filler task in their for the time being so that you have a template to work from. Then, go to file > Open and export > Import/Export > Export to a file > Comma Separated Values > select your desired folder/list > save the file. Then you can go in and open that file, and add your tasks according to the template that was downloaded. Remember to save this as a CSV!

After you have edited and saved your CSV, go to file > Open and export > Import/Export > Import from another program or file > Comma Separated Values > Select your file > select your desired folder/list > import your tasks!