Use the New Item Preferences command (from the Settings menu) to set the default values for fields that appear in the properties window whenever you create a New Item. When you create a new item, the settings will start with the settings you designate here, and then you can choose to further the item's properties as you see fit.
Some fields cannot be given a preference (such as the Title field): such fields appear greyed out in the New Item Preferences window.
For complete explanations on all of the fields,
refer to the New Item help topic. Some of the
fields have special behaviours in the New Item Preferences window, and so
here are special notes on those fields:
Set Date: If you click the Set Date radio button, and leave the date field blank, new items will always default to a Set Start Date of the current date.
Flexible Date: Please see the note below regarding Flexible Date and Priority View.
Deadline: You can click the Flexible Date radio button then specify a date in the deadline field, however this would typically be dysfunctional, since each new item would suggest that specific date as its deadline, and as time goes on that date would be inappropriate. Therefore, there is a way that you can set the Deadline field to have a relative deadline as the preference (i.e. a date that is relative to today's date): for instance, you may wish to have the default deadline always be the date the new item is created, or the day after the new item is created. In order to set this up, click the Flexible Date radio button, then specify an Earliest Begin Date and a Deadline as many days apart as you would like the deadline to differ from the date the item is created (the dates don't matter, as long as the differ by the desired number of days). So, for instance, if you would like the deadline to always default to the date the item is created, make the two dates the same. If you would like the deadline to default to the following date, have the dates differ by one day. Note that the date you are viewing doesn't affect the suggested deadline of the new item: no matter what date you are viewing, the deadline for a new item will be relative to the date the item is created.
Alarm: Notice that you can also set the default for the Alarm settings by clicking the Alarm button in the New Item Preferences window. So, for instance, you could set the suggestion for all Alarms to sound five minutes before the item is to begin, then set the alarm checkbox to unchecked. This will result in new items defaulting to not having an alarm set; however when you do turn on the alarm for a particular item, the alarm settings will default to sounding five minutes before the item is scheduled to begin.
Tier: If you have the Expected Returns feature active (from Other Settings), please read that topic regarding your choices around the best default for the Tier field. Also, please see the note below regarding Tier and Priority View.
New Item Preferences and Priority View: When inserting new items in the Priority View, the New Item Preferences are overridden in keeping with the nature of items in the Priority View: since the Priority View only shows flexible-dated items, when you insert a new item while in the priority view, the new item will be flexible-dated even if your New Item Preferences designate a Set Date. As well, no matter what you have Tier set to in New Item Preferences, new items in the Priority View will have a blank Tier (unless you first set New Item Preferences to flexible-date, set Tier to A (or whatever letter you'd like) then switch the New Item Preferences setting for the date back to Set Date (thus the Tier field is now dimmed and showing the letter of your choice).
New Item Preferences and import: Quite intentionally, some new item preferences are respected while others are ignored when importing items. In general, the new item preferences value for a particular field will be used whenever it does not contradict information being imported.
Related Topics
New Item