why is my OF so slow?
 

Which part of the program places the greatest load on processing power? Can I reduce this lag by simplifying my structures?

Assuming you've tried the steps in the posts at the start of [URL="http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=12071"]this thread[/URL] and they haven't gotten things as speedy as you'd like, the next thing I'd look at is the project tree.

Particularly big or complex ones increase the amount of work OmniFocus needs to do to keep everything running. There are more due dates and styles cascading around, for example.

One thing I've seen from time to time are customers that have a couple hundred (or more) someday/maybe projects in their database. I can understand deriving some comfort from having those projects around, but the cost of that approach is a slower app when you're actually getting work done.

If that sounds like it might be related to what you're seeing.n general, I recommend moving those into a [URL="http://forums.omnigroup.com/showpost.php?p=80425&postcount=2"]secondary OmniFocus database[/URL] and keeping main database for projects that are actively being worked on.

During reviews, just double-click the secondary database - you can then drag projects back and forth as needed to move them onto or off of the active-work list.

Hope that helps, but if it doesn't, describe your setup in more detail and we'll be happy to assist.

Brian - that all makes good sense - but a while back, when exploring a 2nd database for a particularly complex tax matter ( which worked well, btw) TPTB told me that although this could be done, OF wasn't designed to be used in this way.
I could certainly offload shedloads of stuff but I wonder what the fundamental design is - if one is supposed to be able to do everything in the one DB, then I'll try the rationalisations you mention.
There aren't a lot of due dates.
I've reset my styles prefs just to see what happens, will report back.

Performance tuning hasn't gotten enough votes. Even if it got them, none of the bios on the Omni about us page suggests significant experience with high performance software.

OK, I want to clear out all informational actions that I have allocated to the context: 'Hold For Info'

I've created a 2nd DB called 'InfoFocus' and plan to remove everything that isn't 'Hold For Info', while removing all 'Hold For Info' actions from the master DB.

Removing all actions that aren't a particular context is time-consuming. Wish we had a 'toggle selection' as per Logic Pro :-) any suggestions?

( Originally had a problem with page headers but this was because when I copied the DB, I also copied the Perpective icons which, when clicked, would refer back to the original DB. Please add a caveat to your advice on duplicating DBs, that Perspectives in duplicate DBs need to be either trashed or properly redefined)


cheers

pete

If you select all of your contexts in the sidebar and don't have any nested contexts, you can cmd-click on contexts to remove them individually from the selection. If you have some nesting structure, however, it's a bit trickier as you have to avoid clicking on the parent when making the first selection, as including the parent will include all of the children whether selected or not.

I've gone the other route for the time being - I deleted all actions in the dupe and have copied my context across.
Now I am trying to delete those actions assigned to that context.
but...

I get this alert:

"If you delete the selected items, the following hidden items will also be deleted.To hide the selected items without losing their contents, consider changing their status to Dropped or Completed instead of deleting them.

1 Project
1 Action"

Now this is with only a handful of actions within my long list assigned this context (>500).

How do I delete only these actions without collateral damage?
CLearly there are Projects as well as actions assigned to this context. And there are Projects with different assignments that look to be deleted as well.

Further: having played with this idea I find that it's OK to copy context items across, but there's no way to maintain their projects ig the projects are assigned a different context. That then separates information from projects, not so uesful.

I will back up and try your suggestion. Have a full dupe DB and see if I can remove everything but the info context.

I've tried culling a dupe DB of everything that isn't my context 'hold for info'. With all contexts showing, I CMMND-clicked to 'hold for info' context, which remained in the context list, but something happened in the actions list. I then selected all the actions, got the warning that I would also delete loads of other projects and actions, deleted anyway, and got a 'hold for info' context that was empty and another context that was still active. I clicked 'Undo' and IF/OF refuse to appear - I expect they've crashed. I can't be arsed any more. There doesn't seem to be an easy way to strip my OF down to make it more efficient, which means that if I want quick responses I need to jump ship. Evernote seems to be working quite well for me so I will start to focus my tasklists there.
thanks for your help.

pete

where is the database located?
 

in version 1.10 i can't find it.

it used to be omnifocus.ofocus i think

now I only see this omnifocusdatabase2 in library/cache but it's a 20mb text file, where as my backup is only 3mb

thanks!

hi myfre - are you replying in the right thread?

pete