Outlook: Recurring tasks that are hidden before they occur?

Question

I'm keen to the concept of recurring tasks. I'd like to solve two problems with it:

1. Be reminded of things I need to do at a specific day. E.g. on the second last day of the month I need to be reminded to reconcile my budget.
2. Remind myself every x weeks to contact some of the people I want to stay in touch with.

I figured out how to create recurring tasks. What bugs me is that when I schedule a task to end of the month it is already visible now. This clutters my todo list with things I cannot do now but need to wait.

I'm using Outlook 2007 on Windows 7. I'm mostly working in the category view (because I have very distinct categories such as management, support and private). Plus: I'm using TaskSync on my Android device for having the task list always with me.

I figured out that there is a "start date" for each task that can be set to the future. But still the task is visible already now. Here are the things I tried/thought of:

1. Filter out tasks that have either no start date or it's beginning date lies in the future. Problem is that those filters are all OR, meaning that I cannot additionally filter out tasks that are done.
2. I thought that a task that has "start date" in the future is not active, but indeed it appears in the "active tasks" (I think active only means "not done")
3. I thought about changing my todo list view to "tasks due in the next 7 days". But that would mean I would need to set due dates to tasks that have no due date but are important to me. I only want to set due dates to tasks that really have one.
4. I could set these tasks into a category which I just hide from my views and set a task reminder. But then the tasks are not categorize plus to mark them done I need to open this hidden category again.
5. I could set up calendar entries, but I want to keep my calendar clean and not mess it up with todo items which can be done at any time and not just at that given calendar time frame.

I'm somehow new to Outlook so it is possible that I'm tackling the problem fundamentally wrong. Any thoughts are highly appreciated.

Answer 1

Finally found this article that explains it very well: http://shcoderby.livejournal.com/3025.html

=> Number 1 from the list above is the right way to go here. Outlook is smart enough to apply the OR and AND correctly.

Plus this guy has even more on the topic (aka earns some money with Outlooks badly implemented defaults and hidden and hard to understand settings): http://masteryourworkday.com/using-recurring-tasks-in-outlook

He also explains how this can be done in TouchDown (an app on Android that syncs with Exchange): http://masteryourworkday.com/if-you-use-outlook-exchange-and-android-then-try-touchdown-app