How to schedule irregular repeating actions
 

I'm a college professor and I have lots of actions that need to be done twice a year, once in the fall semester and once in the spring semester. Is there any way to set an action to repeat on a schedule that is something like:

Repeat every September 1 and January 15

As far as I can tell OF can't do this but perhaps I'm missing something.

Many thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Abraham Z.

Refactor the repeat. Instead of one action that happens every September 1 and January 15, you have a pair of actions, one that repeats yearly on September 1 and one that repeats yearly on January 15. Use an appropriate start date on each one to hide it from view until relevant.

That's what I thought. It's a pity though, because among other things it means that if you make a change to one item you have to remember to manually make the same change in the other. And of course this is even more of a hassle if it's something that repeats more often. It would be nice to see OF add the kind of flexibility in setting recurrences that is found even in, say, iCal.

Thanks for the quick response.

AZ

I don't see how you could enter an item that repeated on those two dates in iCal as a single item, care to enlighten me?

Sorry, I was a bit too glib - you can't quite assign an item in iCal to recur on Sept. 1 and Jan 15 every year - but you can assign an item to recur on, say, Sept. 3 and Jan. 3 every year, or the 2nd Tuesday of Sept and Jan every year, etc., which works for what I'm trying to do (have certain reminders that recur once in the Fall semester and once in the Spring).

To do this in iCal, create an item, edit it, choose Repeat - Custom. Set the Frequency to Yearly. Choose whichever months you want the event to recur. Choose which day of the week or day you want it to recur. Done.

So, for example, if I have a meeting that occurs on the first Friday of every month, except the months when school is not in session, I can schedule the event to occur in my calendar on all of those Fridays, except, say, Fridays in the summer.

In addition, iCal will remember exceptions that are made to this recurrence pattern. So if I delete one of those recurring meetings, or move it to a different day or time, this won't mess up the overall pattern of recurrence.

I realize that I'm talking about events, not actions, and so perhaps it's a bit of apples and oranges as far as comparing with OF is concerned, but it is something I use a lot in iCal and wish that OF had more robust rules for setting repeating actions.

Thanks,

AZ

Fire up OmniFocus, do Help→Send Feedback, tell the developers what you would like to see. The most popular requests tend to get priority on the development schedule.

That's a good suggestion - I'll do that - thanks!