Possible quick fix to syncing problems
 

OK, this is too easy.

1. [U]Make sure your iDisk is syncing properly[/U]. Open finder window and click right ON the double arrow next to your iDisk. It will say "syncing iDisk, checking items" for awhile, then it will sync some items, then it should say "Last sync: [current date/time]." If you get errors, run it again. Reboot if necessary and repeat.

2. [U]Backup and Sync OF[/U]. Open OmniFocus on desktop, go to Preferences, General, Backup, check "Also Backup While Quitting," and then EXIT OmniFocus to back up your database; then reopen it. Now go back to Preferences, go to Sync, and sync. While you're syncing, quickly open a Finder window, select your iDisk, and watch it while syncing to make sure it syncs. Close OmniFocus.

3. [U]Rename iDisk Database[/U]. Open a Finder window, go to your iDisk location where "OmniFocus.ofocus" is, and rename it to something else.

4. [U]Resync[/U]. Reopen OmniFocus on desktop, go to Preferences, Sync, and sync. This is going to create a new OmniFocus.ofocus file on MobileMe. You will NOT see it right away locally on your Mac; you'll have to sync your iDisk before it shows up.

5. [U]Reset Your iPhone Database[/U]. Go to OF on iPhone, Settings, and tap "Reset Database". That should wipe the iPhone OF of data. Now see if you can do a sync. At some point OF may ask "Sync from local data or server?" Say server.

This is pretty much what I did to fix things. My syncing time on my iPhone dropped from 10-15 mins to 40 seconds. The size of my OmniFocus.ofocus file on MobileMe dropped from 3 GB to 56K. Subsequent syncing of the iPhone over wifi takes 5 seconds.

The only thing I omitted from the above was a script called "coalescedatabase.scpt" that I ran before the whole procedure (provided by OG). I don't really think that helped, since I renamed the database anyway, but if you want the script, it's here:

[url]http://www.the-iblog.com/2008/08/05/omnifocus-iphone-slow-syncing-possible-fix/[/url]

If anyone has any complaints, additions, revisions, etc. to the above, please post. I know a lot of people having been going through pain over this, so getting a quick, easy fix in place before the next update comes out is worth some collaborative effort.

Thanks to the-iblog.com and Monica at OG for all their help!

I'm glad you've got this sorted Sandy. My syncs are around 20secs, though the data seems to be synced before then, the spinning icon at the bottom of the screen is still animated.

Thanks for the link to my blog too :)

Sandy, your directions seem to indicate that you have a locally-synced iDisk. If that is the case, then your step 3 and step 4 worry me, because OmniFocus syncs over WebDAV to the MobileMe server, and _independently_ Apple's iDisk has its own syncing that knows nothing about the structure of the OmniFocus database file and could very easily corrupt or completely delete it. Even if you have OmniFocus on the Mac syncing via Disk mode to your locally-synced iDisk, that will conflict with changes from the iPhone / iPod touch due to the same problem.

The safer way to do this is to mount your iDisk manually in the Finder and delete it there, rather than on the locally-synced iDisk. (Maybe that's what you did, but it wasn't clear from your instructions.)

The general rule of thumb is to mess with your OmniFocus database in one location only. So if you have OmniFocus on _one_ Macintosh, it should be safe to use Disk mode to sync to the local copy of the iDisk and to manually delete the OmniFocus database on the local iDisk when you want to reset it. (Although we've had customers with locally-synced iDisks report unexplained corruption that was resolved for them when they turned off iDisk syncing.) However, if you add a second Mac or an iPhone or iPod touch to the mix, that is no longer safe, and you need to switch to only touching the OmniFocus database via WebDAV. (Which is what we recommend in the common case anyway.)

Andrew, you are definitely the expert. I don't even know the difference between a "locally-synced iDisk" and its opposite.

I believe that the iDisk drive (with a cloud icon) on my MacBookPro (which is ALWAYS present in my Finder) *is* my iDisk, or at least a mirror of it that gets updated by and from the Cloud every so often. And btw, I have only 1 Mac.

I get the impression from your remarks that the danger here is that by tinkering with file names on the "local" iDisk, I might have confused the cloud. It seemed to be OK, however.

[QUOTE=Andrew;43964]Sandy, your directions seem to indicate that you have a locally-synced iDisk. If that is the case, then your step 3 and step 4 worry me, because OmniFocus syncs over WebDAV to the MobileMe server, and _independently_ Apple's iDisk has its own syncing that knows nothing about the structure of the OmniFocus database file and could very easily corrupt or completely delete it. Even if you have OmniFocus on the Mac syncing via Disk mode to your locally-synced iDisk, that will conflict with changes from the iPhone / iPod touch due to the same problem.

The safer way to do this is to mount your iDisk manually in the Finder and delete it there, rather than on the locally-synced iDisk. (Maybe that's what you did, but it wasn't clear from your instructions.)

The general rule of thumb is to mess with your OmniFocus database in one location only. So if you have OmniFocus on _one_ Macintosh, it should be safe to use Disk mode to sync to the local copy of the iDisk and to manually delete the OmniFocus database on the local iDisk when you want to reset it. (Although we've had customers with locally-synced iDisks report unexplained corruption that was resolved for them when they turned off iDisk syncing.) However, if you add a second Mac or an iPhone or iPod touch to the mix, that is no longer safe, and you need to switch to only touching the OmniFocus database via WebDAV. (Which is what we recommend in the common case anyway.)[/QUOTE]

Is this really true? If you have multiple Macs, you can't use the MobileMe sync option?

[QUOTE=Andrew;43964][I]f you add a second Mac or an iPhone or iPod touch to the mix,...you need to switch to only touching the OmniFocus database via WebDAV. (Which is what we recommend in the common case anyway.)[/QUOTE]

Santra, are you able to access your iDisk contents when you are not connected to the network? If so, you have a local copy of your iDisk on your machine (in the form of a big disk image) which is synced with the data on Apple's servers periodically. OmniFocus communicates directly with the servers to make its changes, so if you tinker around with the file and then OmniFocus tinkers around with the file, it's possible that the copy you worked on will overwrite the copy that OmniFocus made the next time your Mac synchronizes its copy of the iDisk. An easy way to check if you have iDisk sync turned on is to just look at the .Mac/MobileMe preference pane in System Preferences. Click on the iDisk tab and it will tell you the status of the iDisk and whether you've got syncing turned on.

To answer your other question, MobileMe sync works just fine with multiple Macs. It's a supported configuration. I think Andrew is saying you wouldn't want to tinker with the database from the Finder on more than one machine for much the same reason that he's nervous about tinkering with the database in the Finder if you have a locally synced iDisk.

Well, there's good news and there's bad news.

The good news:

Syncing OF Desktop to MobileMe seems to be working correctly. I sync, I then sync iDisk on my MBP to "pull down" changes to the Cloud's iDisk to my local hard drive mirror of it, I check the ofocus package's files, and it correctly shows a recent date/time stamp on the most recent files in the package. Moreover, I then run sync on my iPhone, it syncs in 10 secs.

The bad news:

The order of tasks in one of my main projects doesn't match; the order on the iPhone doesn't match the order on the Desktop OF. I did some chancing of task order (which is unsorted) and it doesn't match the iPhone. Isn't it supposed to?

Also, the contents of the iDisk ofocus package are already starting to balloon in size and number after 5 hours. Not good.


[QUOTE=whpalmer4;43971]Santra, are you able to access your iDisk contents when you are not connected to the network? If so, you have a local copy of your iDisk on your machine (in the form of a big disk image) which is synced with the data on Apple's servers periodically. OmniFocus communicates directly with the servers to make its changes, so if you tinker around with the file and then OmniFocus tinkers around with the file, it's possible that the copy you worked on will overwrite the copy that OmniFocus made the next time your Mac synchronizes its copy of the iDisk. An easy way to check if you have iDisk sync turned on is to just look at the .Mac/MobileMe preference pane in System Preferences. Click on the iDisk tab and it will tell you the status of the iDisk and whether you've got syncing turned on.

To answer your other question, MobileMe sync works just fine with multiple Macs. It's a supported configuration. I think Andrew is saying you wouldn't want to tinker with the database from the Finder on more than one machine for much the same reason that he's nervous about tinkering with the database in the Finder if you have a locally synced iDisk.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Andrew;43964]The safer way to do this is to mount your iDisk manually in the Finder and delete it there, rather than on the locally-synced iDisk. [/QUOTE]

How do I do this? I mean, how do I do the mounting? Through terminal?

[QUOTE=santra;43969]Is this really true? If you have multiple Macs, you can't use the MobileMe sync option?[/QUOTE]

You definitely can use MobileMe in that case - I should have been more clear. What you _can't_ do is use the Disk option in OmniFocus syncing preferences to sync to a local iDisk. (The confusion is partly because our MobileMe syncing actually uses WebDAV - the only distinction from our separate WebDAV syncing is that the MobileMe case is simpler to configure because we already know the server name and specifics, and on the Mac we can look up your MobileMe account information as you specified it in System Preferences.)

As whpalmer4 says, you can find out if you have a locally-synced iDisk by going into the MobileMe settings in System Preferences, clicking on the iDisk tab, and looking at the bottom to see if it says iDisk Sync is On or Off. If it is on, then that ever-present iDisk icon in the Finder is for a local mirror of your iDisk, and when OS X syncs between MobileMe and your local iDisk mirror it can (probably will) corrupt your OmniFocus document if it has been changed both locally and on the server.

OK, so it's possibly corrupt. How do I wipe it out and start over?

[QUOTE=Andrew;43974]You definitely can use MobileMe in that case - I should have been more clear. What you _can't_ do is use the Disk option in OmniFocus syncing preferences to sync to a local iDisk. (The confusion is partly because our MobileMe syncing actually uses WebDAV - the only distinction from our separate WebDAV syncing is that the MobileMe case is simpler to configure because we already know the server name and specifics, and on the Mac we can look up your MobileMe account information as you specified it in System Preferences.)

As whpalmer4 says, you can find out if you have a locally-synced iDisk by going into the MobileMe settings in System Preferences, clicking on the iDisk tab, and looking at the bottom to see if it says iDisk Sync is On or Off. If it is on, then that ever-present iDisk icon in the Finder is for a local mirror of your iDisk, and when OS X syncs between MobileMe and your local iDisk mirror it can (probably will) corrupt your OmniFocus document if it has been changed both locally and on the server.[/QUOTE]