"Disappearing tasks"
 

Trying out Omnifocus and have what I presume is a very basic question. I put a bunch of tasks in my inbox. I then went down the list and started assigned a context to each of them. Note that none of these are assigned to projects. Now however, I don't know where to see those tasks. They no longer appear in my inbox and do not appear in the context view where I assumed they would be. What simple thing am I missing?

Thanks.

Glen

Okay, if you look in your project named "Miscellaneous" I bet you will find all of them.

The OmniFocus preferences, Data tab, have a section up top that control the behavior of actions in the Inbox which have a project, context, or both assigned. The default setting does not require both a project and a context to be set, so once you set the context on an action and something happens to cause a clean up (like changing your view), that action will be whisked away and assigned to the Miscellaneous single action list. I personally don't want anything to leave my Inbox until it has both project and context assigned, so I use that setting, and I think it is the safest setting for a beginner, because nothing leaves to points unknown!

Thanks. I checked Misc and they are not there. I did find the setting you referred to and have now set it to only cleanup the tasks once project AND context are set. Still don't know where about 40 tasks are waiting for me in hiding... :(

That same setting has a section called Default List for Single Actions. That's most likely where those "missing" actions went. But if they don't seem to be there, the way to find them is to use the All Items perspective under the Perspectives menu. With that perspective, even if you've inadvertently set some view options to hide some or all of missing actions from sight, you'll see them. Once you figure out where they are, you can move them to where you want them.