Argh....syncing between machines resuscitates old tasks
 

Man, I love OF so much, and sync'ing was the killer feature for me, but I'm going crazy with this problem. I've completely lost faith in my trusted system because of it! :(

My setup: 1 work MacPro, 1 home MacBook Pro, 1 iPhone (although this issue is just related to the Macs, I believe). All sync'ing over MobileMe, as recommended.

My problem is that my machines seem to revive old items that I've checked off on another machine. This is almost always related to recurring tasks, of which I have many (maybe 100 total, every chore, every bill, etc.)

An extreme example happened today. I was on vacation for 10 days, my work machine turned off, my laptop with me. I used my laptop and OF while I was away to keep my life in order. I got back, got caught up on all my tasks from while I was away.

This morning, I launched OF on my work Mac, and it came up (as expected) will all the stuff it thought I didn't do on vacation. It then sync'ed with MobileMe.

Expected Result: My work Mac notices that all those tasks were completed while I was away, and removes them, bringing it's DB in sync with my laptop which I'd been updated and sync'ing all week.

Actual Broken Result: My work machine spammed MobileMe with 30 tasks it thought I hadn't done, which then reappeared on my laptop, completely confusing and cluttering my DB, getting all my recurring tasks out of sync from when they really should have been due, etc.

Fortunately, I back up regularly, so I restored a previous OF DB onto my laptop from yesterday, blew away the MobileMe and work Mac ones, and forced everyone to resync.

But I have completely lost faith now. How can I prevent this from happening? Is it really true that unless I leave my work Mac running all the time, even while I'm away, that sync is incapable of figuring out how my recurring tasks work?

Please help OmniNinjas!

I don't think I can document an example as clean as this one, but this is something I have ALSO run into more often than I would like. In my case it always crops up in such a way that I'm not really sure exactly when the discrepancies crept in, so I'm not sure I can provide better diagnostic info...

This sounds like a bug that we fixed in 1.0.3 for the iPhone and recent sneakypeeks for the Mac. Please make sure that you have a current sneakypeek and that you have OmniFocus 1.0.3 on your phone.

[QUOTE=Andrew;44859]This sounds like a bug that we fixed in 1.0.3 for the iPhone and recent sneakypeeks for the Mac. Please make sure that you have a current sneakypeek and that you have OmniFocus 1.0.3 on your phone.[/QUOTE]

Any idea how long ago, Andrew? I keep very up to date on SneakyPeeks, but if it was in the last week, then it might have been while I was on vacation. I tried to "check for updates" as soon as a launched my work machine OF copy, but the sync was faster than the check for updates, so the clobber happened anyway.

I do hope this fixes it. Otherwise, I may need to abandon a second mac, and stick with iPhone and laptop only, which would defeat a lot of the promise of OF.

Thanks for your continued hard work. I know how difficult sync'ing is, but please keep focusing on it. It'll pay off in spades down the line for Omni!

On the desktop, the fix was released on August 4 (in revision 103667). On the phone, it was released on August 13 (in 1.0.3).

[QUOTE=Ken Case;44873]On the desktop, the fix was released on August 4 (in revision 103667). On the phone, it was released on August 13 (in 1.0.3).[/QUOTE]

Thanks much, Ken. Hopefully that was it, I think my work machine still had a Sneaky from Aug. 2 (103638) when I opened it this morning. I'll keep an eye out, and stay optimistic! :-)

[QUOTE=wkoffel;44876]I'll keep an eye out, and stay optimistic! :-)[/QUOTE]
I think there's good cause to be optimistic. I also have a lot of repeating actions and projects, and the problems I was having with them when syncing between two Macs came to an immediate end as soon as I got the fixes mentioned by Ken, et al.

[QUOTE=wkoffel;44876]I'll keep an eye out, and stay optimistic! :-)[/QUOTE]

Your problems should go away once you update. I had these same problems before, but they have completely disappeared.

By the way, it seemed like it was often related to repeated tasks and/or projects that had a start date...

[QUOTE=beharkey;44881]Your problems should go away once you update. I had these same problems before, but they have completely disappeared.

By the way, it seemed like it was often related to repeated tasks and/or projects that had a start date...[/QUOTE]

Bingo, that's exactly what my problem has been, recurring tasks with start date.

Thanks to everyone who's chimed in. And thanks Omni!