Spotlight and OF

[jgrafix]

On the OF page on the Omni website it says the following:
Access your tasks via Spotlight

Access all your OmniFocus task information using Spotlight. Looking for all your project materials? Bring up files, mail messages and your OmniFocus projects in a single search.

What exactly does that mean? I don't seem to be able to see individual OF items when I use Spotlight.

[jgrafix]

OK, I now see the project metadata file. It is useful that Spotlight can search in the project metadata which apparently includes actions.

So here's where the ability to tag and QuickLook a project would come in handy.

Tags are useful because it would be ackward to name projects &project_name so that they come up distinctly in searches. Using the & character helps to distiguish a phrase as a tag and thus eliminates all the other noise that you might get in a search. It helps to make clean smart folders.

Then, what would be ideal is to be able to QuickLook a project and see the actions inside.

Even better would be to have tags on the individual actions and have those appear in Spotlight.

That way, all the information is truly available in a smart folder though Spotlight.

[acollins]

OK, I now see the project metadata file. It is useful that Spotlight can search in the project metadata which apparently includes actions.

So here's where the ability to tag and QuickLook a project would come in handy.

Tags are useful because it would be ackward to name projects &project_name so that they come up distinctly in searches. Using the & character helps to distiguish a phrase as a tag and thus eliminates all the other noise that you might get in a search. It helps to make clean smart folders.

Then, what would be ideal is to be able to QuickLook a project and see the actions inside.

Even better would be to have tags on the individual actions and have those appear in Spotlight.

That way, all the information is truly available in a smart folder though Spotlight.

Would you please clarify this a bit? What are you seeing from OmniFocus in your Spotlight searches and how are you seeing it?

[Toadling]

OmniFocus automatically creates Spotlight metadata stubs for all "remaining" projects and single-action lists (i.e. active, on hold, etc., but not completed or dropped) in your database. You can see these stored at:

~/Library/Caches/Metadata/com.omnigroup.OmniFocus

When you do a Spotlight search that matches the name or contents of any of those items, the Finder will display the stub of the project/single-action list with the item's name among all the other matched files found. The file type for the stub is listed as:

com.omnigroup.omnifocus.project.metadata

If you double-click on one of the found items, OmniFocus will come to the front, open a new window, and display the found item with the matching search criteria highlighted.

One problem I've encountered, however, is that if the item found with Spotlight happens to be "on hold", when you double-click it in the Finder the new OmniFocus window just comes up and beeps without displaying the item. I'm going to send a bug report on this issue.

[bijo]

Spotlight finds OF tasks without a problem - but I'd wish they had a more distinctive icon!

[Toadling]

I'd really like to be able to use Quick Look to preview a selected item from a Spotlight search result. Now that would be really handy.