Disappearing notes?
 

I'm 99% sure this is [b]not[/b] happening, but I want to put a stake in the ground:

Has anyone entered items (with notes) via Quick Entry, and discovered that they've disappeared later? Either the notes have gone missing, or the items themselves?

I'm pretty sure this is user error, and I'm just misremembering things: I thought I captured a note, and it turns out I didn't. It seems unlikely that this would be an OF bug.

But it sure seems to be happening a lot lately, so I figured I'd ask around.

I've been using OmniFocus heavily since September 2007 and I've [B]never[/B] had any data disappear on me - no data loss whatsoever. That's including every pre-release sneakypeak build as well.

I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but in my experience OmniFocus is extremely reliable.

-Dennis

Jay,
The only thing along these lines that I've ever experienced involved an unexpected interaction between OF and another application that worked via Input Manager (TextExpander). You might want to check to see if you've got something like that going on.

The other thing that happens to some folks is that they accidentally switch to a view setting that is hiding some tasks and they don't realize it.

This does happen---I recently submitted a bug report about it.

I dragged a file into the notes and although the notes symbol was still visible, the dragged file went missing (I checked weeks later as I wanted to work on this task). I found the file in the OmniFocus.ofocus data directory, but it still doesn't show up in the notes.

[QUOTE=kasi;53593]I found the file in the OmniFocus.ofocus data directory, but it still doesn't show up in the notes.[/QUOTE]

What's the "OmniFocus.ofocus data directory" you mentioned? Is that a directory inside the OmniFocus database bundle? I've never seen it.

-Dennis

Dennis, how many times do I have to explain the file format to you?!? :-)

Yeah, if you open up the package, and drag out the big 0000000...zip file, and uncompress it, you'll end up with a folder containing a contents.xml file and a data directory full of folders containing attached documents. For example:

[URL=http://imageshack.us][IMG]http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/7735/picture17ht5.png[/IMG][/URL]

Hmm, interesting. I don't keep any attachments embedded in my database (i.e. they're all linked in). So when I uncompress my 0000...zip file all I get is a contents.xml file. No wonder I had never seen the data directory. That might also explain why I've never seen the issue kasi mentioned.

-Dennis

Thanks all.. I haven't been dragging any files into notes; I'm just using that field for "expanded text". I do have a few SIMBL-type things running, so if I see this continuing, I'll dig in that direction. It's most likely in the "I'm sure I wrote that down.. I must have, right?" category.

[QUOTE=kasi;53593]
I dragged a file into the notes and although the notes symbol was still visible, the dragged file went missing (I checked weeks later as I wanted to work on this task). I found the file in the OmniFocus.ofocus data directory, but it still doesn't show up in the notes.[/QUOTE]

There was (is?) a bug where an attachment for a deleted action would remain in the database, but not accessible from the UI. So, the fact that the file was in the data directory does not necessarily mean that OF lost data. It is possible that either the action was deleted and recreated without the note, or perhaps that editing of the note was cancelled after the attachment was made. Of course, it's also possible that OF lost data, but I've never seen that even in the very earliest sneaky peeks of v1.0.

happening to me as well
 

I just had a meeting, writing notes in the Notes field, and when I took a look at Omni back at my desk, it was all gone. I bolded lines that were important for me to remember...ugh.

Just wanted to note that it happened to me as well...You're not crazy. I'll have to try to look into the software conflicts some of you mentioned. Not sure what would be conflicting, but I'll try to do some research. I am running, AOL Instant Messenger, maybe that's it, I don't know. Other than that...iCal, FireFox, Photoshop. Unless it's something running in the background.

[QUOTE=Lainie;54083]I just had a meeting, writing notes in the Notes field, and when I took a look at Omni back at my desk, it was all gone. I bolded lines that were important for me to remember...ugh.

Just wanted to note that it happened to me as well...You're not crazy. I'll have to try to look into the software conflicts some of you mentioned. Not sure what would be conflicting, but I'll try to do some research. I am running, AOL Instant Messenger, maybe that's it, I don't know. Other than that...iCal, FireFox, Photoshop. Unless it's something running in the background.[/QUOTE]

What, if anything, did you do in OmniFocus after making the changes to the note field? I have seen cases when creating a new note where it didn't get saved because I didn't close the edit. I can't reproduce it right now, but I know it has happened to me, and now I make a practice of always being sure to click elsewhere (thus causing OmniFocus to write that change out to the database) as soon as I think I might be done typing or otherwise editing something. My suspicion is that the missing stuff isn't being lost from the database, but rather never was entered into the file on the disk.

a-ha! I think that's likely what happened! Silly me. Thanks for the feedback!

Yeah, my understanding is that text fields don't fire the 'hey, I have new stuff' message until something else gets selected.

I assume that smarter folks than me have good reasons for making it work this way, but I can attest to the fact that it does confuse folks. :-)

lost notes here too
 

it seems that omnifocus lost some very important snapshots i took with skitch (skitch.com).
the process was as follows: i took a snapshot with skitch, drag it into the attachement section of a tast and added some description.
after a couple of days i need to view them again. unfortunatelly when i clicked the image (appeared as a jpg item) i was requested to look for the image myself which should have been in either /tmp/xxx.jpg or /private/tmp/xxx.jpg .
its really weird and a pain in the ass as i needed these docs for doing something for a client which i have to contact again.

if you know something about it or confirm this please file a bug.

especially working with skitch gets more and more important to me. would need to switch applications if this process doesn`t work.

thanks for reply <3

[QUOTE=mtin79;54174]unfortunatelly when i clicked the image (appeared as a jpg item) i was requested to look for the image myself which should have been in either /tmp/xxx.jpg or /private/tmp/xxx.jpg .
[/QUOTE]

I can't speak to your reported issue and haven't run into any data loss problems myself, but I can tell you that the /tmp and /private/tmp directories are cleaned up on reboot. So if you restarted your machine recently, it's not surprising that the images are now gone.

You should contact the support ninjas to get the most accurate explanation of what's going on here and how to avoid it in the future. And you can log a bug report if this is, indeed, a problem in the software.

-Dennis

Sorry for the inconvenience this caused; to avoid it in the future, option-drag the file into OmniFocus; that embeds the file in the database, rather than link to it in the current location.

I don't think anything in /tmp is guaranteed to stick around all that long; my guess is the original got deleted.

[QUOTE=Brian;54127]Yeah, my understanding is that text fields don't fire the 'hey, I have new stuff' message until something else gets selected.[/QUOTE]

We've fixed this for version 1.8, so edits in progress should no longer get lost when changes are synchronized from another computer. (1.8 saves partial edits when synchronization begins, and once again right before synchronization incorporates changes pulled from another computer.)