I've been a heavy user of the Microsoft To Do (formerly Wunderlist) apps for many years.

It is one of the few icons I keep locked on my desktop taskbar, and I will click on it frequently throughout the day to add things like shopping list items, notes to self, room dimensions I might need one day while looking for furniture, etc etc etc. I use it a LOT.

Now when I click on it all I get is a kind of 'splash' screen called 'my day'. There are almost no options or menus available to see anything else. Navigating to my lists requires right-clicking the taskbar icon and selecting "all", which then delivers an almost-as-useless godzilla list of all my lists compiled into one unwieldy monster. Worse, although I can add items here, I can't edit anything or even see the further detail I may have added to the item.

It's like some kind of stripped back 'viewer' version with limited permissions. You can probably imagine the swearing I want to do but I'll remain calm.

It seems that Microsoft really wants me to do everything from within Outlook. This is terrible - Outlook takes MUCH longer to open, is less responsive while doing its initial send/receive business, and then To Do is slow to load once selected.

Alternatively it interrupts any workflow I may already be doing in Outlook and greatly increases the chances of Outlook being open in the wrong mode whenever I return to it after doing something else. I hate it.

Is there any way I can regain full usability from the standalone desktop app???!!! I don't mind cheats or workarounds if I have to, but I really need to access and edit at least my main 1 or 2 lists a lot faster than I can via Bloatlook.