Selecting projects from a hierarchical list
 

I'm sure there's already a thread here that covers this but I can't find it now.

When adding actions in OmniFocus for iPad, unless I can remember the name of the project, I cannot tell from the drop-down list what they are. The list has a short snippet of the project name which starts with the folder hierarchy then there's are a few dots to separate a short snippet of the end of the project name.

As the majority of my projects names are the outcomes, my choice from the list looks a little like this;

Work : Admin : Annu...has been implemented
Work : Admin : BBIS...ngs have been updated

While shortening the folder names helps, it's certainly not ideal;

W : Adm : Annual fee...as been implemented
W : Adm : BBIS Soft...ngs have been updated

Big projects aren't a problem, it's the smaller ones that I can never remember.

Any tips on how to overcome this problem please?

If you have some stock phrases that recur in your descriptions, especially at the end, why not abbreviate them?

has been updated -> HBU or upd.
has been implemented -> HBI or impl.

or just strip out the "has been" — you don't have much display space, so don't waste it on things that provide no useful information. If you plan to use this to generate a report later, using a consistent set of abbreviations will allow you to return to the verbose form with ease.

That's not a bad idea but with the abbreviations to the folders as well, it starts looking a little cryptic.

I like having full folder names so I might try your suggestions for a while to see if I can adjust.

If that doesn't work, I may just resort to processing my inbox when I get home on the Mac, it's not ideal but probably better than the alternative.

If any of the Omni team are reading, is it possible to alter the code so that the snippet is always the beginning of the string, for example;

Work : Admin : Annual fee revisions...
Work : Admin : BBIS Software setti...

The above examples would make it easier to slightly alter your naming conventions to fit within the constraints.

[QUOTE=Stephen Brown;114092]If any of the Omni team are reading, is it possible to alter the code so that the snippet is always the beginning of the string, for example;

Work : Admin : Annual fee revisions...
Work : Admin : BBIS Software setti...

The above examples would make it easier to slightly alter your naming conventions to fit within the constraints.[/QUOTE]

But this wouldn't work for those of us who use long and multiple folder names. OF is used in many different ways, it's one of its many strengths.

What Omni need to do is widen the search / Display box. I can't see a reason you wouldn't use 90% of the screen. Short names quickly become cryptic, especially if you have similar projects and / or hundreds of projects.

I've suggested to the Ninjas using the same dialog for projects, contexts and the move dialog for moving projects. search box and wide display

Making the box wider does seem like an obvious approach. If for some reason they didn't want to do that, an adaptive approach to abbreviating the names would be helpful — when you've got a run of matching characters in two adjacent entries that are too long to fit intact, put the ellipsis where the matching characters are!

I'm experimenting with shortened projects names so that they are just titles rather than detailed outcomes, for example 'GA2005 Policy 2012' rather than 'GA2005 policy has been revised for 2012'. It's not ideal but it's working so far and with short folder names, I can see the whole string.