Preventing projects from being deleted when complete

[Kay]

Is there a way to keep a project open once the last task has been completed? For example, if I have a project called Shopping, this is an ongoing project but every so often I will have completed all the tasks in it so I don't want it to be deleted.

I have tried changing the option in Preferences "When completing the last item, mark the project or group complete" but this didn't seem to make any difference.

[Greg Jones]

The setting in Preferences will only be applied as the default to newly created projects. You can change this on a project by project basis by showing the info for a project (Command-Shift-I) and check/uncheck the 'Mark complete when completing last item' box.

[Kay]

Brilliant! Thank you so much.

[achrysos]

This doesn't work for me. I have tried several times to do this to certain projects only to come back later to discover that they have been marked as completed when the last action is done.

This must be a bug - has nobody else seen this?

[RobTrew]

In Where in OF (http://bit.ly/OF-Find2), the saveable search:

projects where completed by children is true

will enable you to list (and focus on) all/any projects which are set to be completed by their children.

If you select a range of such projects, you should be able to batch reset their 'completed by children' status with a single click in the Project inspector dialog.


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[achrysos]

Thanks - but my point is that each time that I uncheck the "Mark complete when completing last item", I will then return to that project and it will be set again. Not immediately - and this is what is really puzzling - but after an undetermined amount of time (days/weeks).

In my mind this is clearly a bug, but I just cannot see a common denominator in what I do that might trigger it, i.e. reset the checkbox.

[whpalmer4]

And these projects that have been completed against your wishes definitely have that checkbox checked again? It couldn't be that the project accidentally got marked completed?

[achrysos]

Yep - seriously. It's been driving me batty as I cannot discern a pattern in what I am doing that would do this. I thought it was a syncing issue (I am using WebDAV) but I cannot tell.

What I find most annoying is when this happens to projects which I've designated for Single Actions. I am regularly putting actions into them and occasionally they get cleared out, but then something else will come along which I need to put in there. When I try to do so, from the Quick Entry window which I use a lot, I cannot find the project. I go look for it and I see that it has been marked as completed.

If anybody can suggest something that I can try that may shed light into what is happening (whether it's a bug or I am doing something silly) then please tell me!

[whpalmer4]

You should definitely contact the support ninjas (1-800-315-OMNI or omnifocus@omnigroup.com) and see if they've seen anything like this before. I haven't seen it myself, and haven't seen any reports of it on the forums, but that doesn't mean they haven't heard of it.

As a stopgap measure, why not add an action to each of these projects/SALs that you want to "protect" from this behavior, with a start date well in the future so that you don't see it? Then the projects won't really be empty and it won't matter if that checkbox is somehow changing state on you. You could also make yourself a project-mode perspective that just shows completed projects, grouped by completion date, closing all groups except for today and yesterday, which you could use to quickly check every day that you haven't completed any projects that you didn't intend to complete.

[curt.clifton]

I reported a bug sometime back where selecting multiple items and changing that checkbox doesn't stick. Changing one project or action group at a time works, but not batch changing several. Is that what's happening here?

[RobTrew]

I reported a bug sometime back where selecting multiple items and changing that checkbox doesn't stick. Changing one project or action group at a time works, but not batch changing several. Is that what's happening here?

I notice that batch setting of the 'completed by children' property of several selected projects seems to be working (and surviving at least a quit and reload) in the current 1.8 sneaky peeks.

(Based on projects where completed by children is true|false tests in Where in OF (http://bit.ly/OF-Find2))

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[curt.clifton]

I notice that batch setting of the 'completed by children' property of several selected projects seems to be working (and surviving at least a quit and reload) in the current 1.8 sneaky peeks.


achrysos, are you running 1.7.x or the 1.8 sneaky peeks?

[jashan]

I'm running the current version (1.9.3) and the same is happening to me. It seems that this may be related to synching (I mostly sync with iPad; less frequently with iPhone).

I'm trying this all with "Single Actions" projects. And with some, it seems to persist. When I uncheck the option ("Mark complete when completing last item" in Project Inspector), it does get saved. After closing / re-opening OmniFocus, it's still there.

However, after a while, it will be checked again (and I'm certainly not the one checking it ;-) ). I just synched the Mac App, then the iPad App, then the Mac App again. Still unchecked.

Then, I changed one item in a project that had it unchecked, on the iPad ("+1 day" on both start and due). Synched iPad, synched Mac - and the checkbox was active again.

So, this should reproduce it. At least on MobileMe-sync (which is what I'm using).

[mpw]

I, too, have been seeing this kind of behavior. I'm unable to reproduce it, but I have created Single Action projects for each of my family members as well as Single Action Work:Priority and Work:Miscellaneous projects several times each. They always seem to disappear, presumably when I complete the last action in the list. I don't notice it until the next time I want to add a task to the project that I *know* I created at one point but is no longer there.

I wonder if it has something to do with syncing to my iPod Touch, but, as I said, I am unable to reproduce it.

[jashan]

I've just moved over to OmniSync - and it's still happening there as well, with all the most recent versions of OmniFocus (on iPad, iPhone and Mac).

I'm also "sending feedback" on this - hopefully this will eventually get fixed because it's really annoying (usually what happens is that suddenly, some project "magically disappeared" because obviously I don't always check that checkbox and frequently don't immediately notice a project disappeared; especially if it's one that I'm only using sparingly).

[jashan]

I have good news: I just tried to reproduce the issue, and wasn't able to. The reason was because I changed the default setting in OmniFocus for Mac to "unchecked". So, now this issue still happens when I have a project with the flag checked (the bug then unchecks the flag when there's changes on the iPad that are being synced back to the Mac) - but that's something I can live with.

So, to be more precise in the description of the issue:

OmniFocus for Mac has projects reset to the default value as set in "Preferences / Data / Projects & Action Groups / When completing the last item ( ) Mark the project or group complete" when there are changes being made in the project on the iPad which are being synced back (I tried renaming the project and adding / ticking off items).

So, at least for me, there's a workaround that's "good enough".