Repeating without knowing legnth of time
 

What if I want something to repeat after I've checked it as complete?

i.e.Business Travel Pack - needs to repeat later at my choice with no specific date because I don't know the next time I'm traveling.

[QUOTE=themothertucker;52187]What if I want something to repeat after I've checked it as complete?

i.e.Business Travel Pack - needs to repeat later at my choice with no specific date because I don't know the next time I'm traveling.[/QUOTE]

Set it to repeat with interval 1 minute. As soon as you check off the previous copy as complete, put the new one on hold, to be revived when you need it.

You might also check out Curt Clifton's [URL="http://www.rose-hulman.edu/~clifton/software.html#PopTemp"]Populate Template Placeholders script[/URL] for a handy solution to the general problem.

Thanks, doesn't the action disappear though after I check it off? I'm sooo confused by this program :( It doesn't seem very mac. I'm sure it's just because it's so powerful and robust and it takes time to learn, but it seems like the technical writers who wrote the manuel are totally pc guys.

[QUOTE=themothertucker;52226]Thanks, doesn't the action disappear though after I check it off? I'm sooo confused by this program :( It doesn't seem very mac. I'm sure it's just because it's so powerful and robust and it takes time to learn, but it seems like the technical writers who wrote the manuel are totally pc guys.[/QUOTE]
It seems plenty Mac to me! I can't stand using Windows, and feel right at home in OmniFocus (and OmniPlan, and OmniWeb, and OmniOutliner, perhaps you see a pattern developing here? :-) A typical Windows program would be at least as confusing, but offer no reward for figuring it out!

I'm sure that any feedback on specific areas of the manual that you find inadequate would be gratefully accepted if you send it via Help->Send Feedback.

One thing that is a bit unclear to me -- is your "business travel pack" an action, or a project? To me, that's a multi-step project, and my suggestion relies on the ability to put a project on hold indefinitely (not currently available for individual actions).

Whether an action or project will disappear immediately upon being marked complete depends on a number of settings. Some like their completed actions to immediately disappear and so set the "Immediately hide completed items" option in the Data pane of the Preferences. I don't particularly care for that behavior, as I enjoy seeing the evidence of having gotten something done (until it gets in the way, and then a quick Clean Up removes it from sight). But even if you do like actions to disappear without a trace, it's just a matter of turning on the view bar (use the toolbar button, or View->Show View Bar, or cmd-shift-V) and setting the action selector to Completed to be able to see your completed action(s). It shouldn't matter with my suggestion, as the new one is going to appear in about a minute, and you don't need to do anything with the old one.

Alternative approach to setting the repeat interval to 1 minute is to simply find the completed old project, make sure you are viewing all actions, select all of its rows (including the project name), and duplicate it with cmd-D or Edit->Duplicate. This will cause a copy of all of those rows to be appended to the existing project. Now select the newly added rows, control-click to get the pop-up menu and uncheck Complete. This will cause those rows to be unchecked. Finally, select the row that is the same as the name of the project, and outdent it with Edit->Outlining->Outdent (or cmd-[) and it will turn into a new project which you can put on hold, set a start date, or whatever.

I'll put in another plug for Curt's script, mentioned earlier. You make a template project, with placeholder variables if you want. Then the next time you need a fresh project, you select the template and run the script that fills in the blanks. You end up with a new, customized project all ready to go. For example, I've got a template for purchasing something on eBay that helps me remember to do all the various steps in the transaction. When I run the script, I'm prompted for the name of the item and the date by which I need to pay, and it creates a custom project based on those answers.

[URL=http://imageshack.us][IMG]http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/9822/picture18yq4.png[/IMG][/URL]

After running the script with a hypothetical bit of data, here's what I get:

[URL=http://imageshack.us][IMG]http://img367.imageshack.us/img367/843/picture19lh9.png[/IMG][/URL]