How to put a project FOLDER "on hold"

[santra]

I don't want to just "drop" it

It's got dozens of projects under it

Anyone have a good hack for this?

[ksrhee]

I don't want to just "drop" it

It's got dozens of projects under it

Anyone have a good hack for this?

To put a project on hold, just right click and select "hold." Is this what you are asking for?

[santra]

To put a project on hold, just right click and select "hold." Is this what you are asking for?

Nope. As I stated in the subject of this thread, I want to know how to put a project FOLDER on hold.

Folder right-click gives an abbreviated version of Project right-click. You get two actions: Active and Dropped.

I wanted to be able to put a whole Folder (which has many subfolders and dozens of projects under it) on hold.

Looking for good hack.

Thanks.

[ksrhee]

Nope. As I stated in the subject of this thread, I want to know how to put a project FOLDER on hold.

Folder right-click gives an abbreviated version of Project right-click. You get two actions: Active and Dropped.

I wanted to be able to put a whole Folder (which has many subfolders and dozens of projects under it) on hold.

Looking for good hack.

Thanks.

OK. I see. Why do you want to put the folder on hold since folders are no more than place holders for projects?

If you want to put all the projects under one folder on hold, you can select multiple projects and right click to put them on hold.

However, I am not sure I see your rationale for putting folders on hold though.

Thanks.

[Toadling]

It might be nice to be able to put folders on hold, but other than the badge that appears on the icon, there's not a lot of practical difference from just marking the folder as dropped. So why not just drop it for now?

Rumor has it the Omni is moving towards a common state model of all database objects in v2.0. Presumably, this means actions, projects, contexts, and folders will all be hold-able and drop-able.

-Dennis

[santra]

What happens if I "drop" the folder?

Is it deleted?

Does it still sync to the iPhone?

[Toadling]

Is it deleted?

No, nothing gets deleted, including dropped folders and their contents, unless you manually delete them.

The dropped state just prevents the folder and its contents from showing up in most views. I believe the only way dropped folders will appear in planning mode is if you select the Perspectives->All Items menu option. The contents of dropped folders never appear in context mode.

Does it still sync to the iPhone?

Yes, but just like the Mac app, you need to adjust your view settings to see items that are dropped.

In the settings pane in OmniFocus for iPhone, set the "In Projects, show:" option to "All".

-Dennis

[mister blahblah]

as toadling said you can just drop the entire folder.

but as an addition: if you have a "waiting" or "on hold" type context or project, then after dropping the folder, why dont you then create an entry in that location with an item name like "@Dropped - Name of Folder" that way it will still stay on your radar during regular reviews and still be available during searches (its not with dropped by itself) also as an extra benefit if you think you might want to glance at its contents from time to time or during reviews and dont want to have to always switch views to do so, just 'focus' on the folder and 'expand all' then take a quick 'selection screenshot' (cmd+shft+4 and then select area on a mac) and drag it off your desktop to the new @dropped item and now you can glance at it when ever you like but it wont show up anywhere except for where you want it...your review.

as an addition, you can also make a perspective just for dropped items or the particular dropped folder so that you can quickly get to them if needed for editing. (choose Dropped from the view bar’s project filter pop-up menu) if not, like was said by toadling perspectives -->all items or the view bar.

to return to normal:
mark the @dropped item completed, Find the dropped project, then set the project’s status back to Active.


i think this also makes the iphone situation a bit better, hope it helps and isnt too obvious

blah

[johnjj]

Hi there,

I hereby kindly ask the mighty Omniguys to implement the "on hold"-status
also to Folders.

My point here it's faster shuffling projects in folders than assigning the status
everytime again. This gives me (and probably also others (http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=15803)) a more intuitive handling of projects. Like putting a paper folder/list into a someday/maybe-folder.

As soon as you pull it out of it and put it back somewhere else, you're ready.

Since the functionality is already given by with the "dropped"-status,
it shouldn't be much effort, just a question of philosophy.

And there is also a good process reason behind it:
If you do a weekly review you also have to go through your someday/maybe's as one of the last steps. ("get creative")
At the moment you just can do this reasonably by filter all the
projects to see where they all are. But so you loose a lot of folders
in the view. So if you keep those projects in a separate folder like I do,
it's a pain to put them back in a other folder. (use a second window)

cheers & thanks in advance & happy Easter ...

Udo

[Brian]

Thanks for contacting us! I believe there's a feature request open on this in the development database. If folks that want to see this added contact the support ninjas (omnifocus@omnigroup.com), they can vote the change up on your behalf.

[CatOne]

What happens to Dropped folders when you use the OmniFocus "archive" option? Are they moved to the archive when sufficient time has passed? I want to avoid that. If "Dropped" folders behave identically to "On Hold" projects (that is they will never be archived) then they're workable for me. But I need to know if the archive reaper will claim them as that would be an issue.

[Toadling]

I can't speak with certainty, but it sure seems like dropped folders don't get archived. I have a dropped folder that I use to hold project templates that's been sitting in my main OmniFocus document for years, and it's never been archived.

-Dennis

[santra]

Thanks, all, for the very valuable information.

And thanks, Brian—email sent.

[invictus26]

I'm really hoping that "on hold" comes to folders soon, but in the meantime, is there a way to set a keyboard shortcut to setting projects on hold? I tried setting it up in the keyboard preferences, but it didn't work. If there's no way to add it on our own, could it be added as one of the default shortcuts?

[RobTrew]

There is an applescript (http://forums.omnigroup.com/showpost.php?p=77772&postcount=4) which switches the contents of whole folders to On Hold or Active in another thread (http://forums.omnigroup.com/showpost.php?p=77772).

If you are using OF 1.8, there is also a faster, toggling version (http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?p=83918#post83918) (does not prompt the user for a choice, and uses slightly faster code).

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