"Completed" List?
 

I found an old thread in the FAQ (2007 - [url]http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=6018[/url] ) about this, but I was wondering if this subject has been addressed since.

I'd like to generate a list of my completed tasks for a specified date or time range. Is that possible? Does Omnifocus now track the date and time that you mark a task as completed?

And if it's not possible to do this within Omnifocus, does anyone have an automated suggestion? Currently I'm keeping a manual list which seems silly given that all of the tasks are already sitting in Omnifocus.

Thanks!

[QUOTE=mojen;58486]I found an old thread in the FAQ (2007 - [url]http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=6018[/url] ) about this, but I was wondering if this subject has been addressed since.

I'd like to generate a list of my completed tasks for a specified date or time range. Is that possible? Does Omnifocus now track the date and time that you mark a task as completed?

And if it's not possible to do this within Omnifocus, does anyone have an automated suggestion? Currently I'm keeping a manual list which seems silly given that all of the tasks are already sitting in Omnifocus.

Thanks![/QUOTE]

OmniFocus does track the completed date (it has for a very long time, but there wasn't a column until maybe 6 months ago?). You can create a view which is sorted by completion date, just add the column. It's best if you create a custom perspective for this.

OmniFocus has tracked the completion date/time of completed actions and projects for a long time; I think the issue was that one couldn't show the completion date/time anywhere except the inspector. This is no longer the case, although Rob's script mentioned in the other thread is still useful as a way to get the information out in a form to be further massaged. Another route would be to select the desired rows and use the File->Export... command with the Comma Separated Values (CSV) format and then process with your favorite spreadsheet. Rob's script, working as it does only on the selected rows, allows you to do an extra sort of the data before export. Pull up a list of completed items (in context view) and sort by completion date to make finding the time period of interest easiest. Select the block of rows, and without clicking in the main window (which would alter the selection) sort by your desired additional sort key, then run the script. The selected rows may be scattered all over the window, but the script will export them, and that's something I don't believe you can do with the built-in export commands.

Thanks for the replies, they are very helpful. I've created a custom perspective showing all of my completed tasks ungrouped and sorted by date, and another one showing my completed tasks grouped by project and sorted by date. I am going to start using the Estimate column to log the time spent on the task (even though that's not what it's for) and then I'll have all the information I need in one place.

What would be nice to have:

- Completion times in addition to the date
- A way to generate a 'Completed' report grouped by project for a specific time period.
- A column to input the actual time spent
- A way to sum up the amount of time spent on the tasks for a project for a specified period of time

Any suggestions are welcome.

My initial suggestion would be to find a job where you didn't have to do all that :-) I do wonder if the big picture wouldn't be better if you could spend all the time devoted to tracking what was done and when to doing new things instead!

Sounds like what you need to do could be accomplished by exporting to a spreadsheet. You'll get the actual times as well as the dates, and you can then massage the data as needed.

I don't see anything wrong with using the duration column to log how long you actually spent, particularly with repeating items. If you enter the amount of time you spent before marking it complete, then your duration estimate for the next repeat should tend to track the time it will take.