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OK, got that out of my system!

One of many features I'd like in OF is templates. Lots of my projects (such as "Instal cooling for Acme") have very similar steps, or at least a common skeleton., and it's a pain having to enter them all manually each time.

OF doesn't have templates, but it does have import. You need either OmniPlan or OmniOutliner for this to work, but not both. I have OP.

So, I create a new OP document, with all the steps I want in my master OF project, including any common data such as duration and notes (though sadly not attachments/links), and then export it as an OmniOutliner oo3 file.

Obviously with OO you'd do the same but just save it, but I've not tested that as I don't have OO.

In OF you can then simply import the document, which very conveniently will land in inbox ready for assigning a project etc. You can even import the same document over and over before editing anything.

When you go to import, you're offered the opportunity to edit the field mappings, so for example I now have "assignment" in OP mapped to "context" in OF.

It would be nice to think you could export a project from OF, to use as a template in the future, but it looks like you can only export the whole OF document, AND can't import one OF document into another. You may be able to do it using one of the other file formats OF will export to though.

I created this in OF with just four clicks - took about 5 seconds - once I'd created the template as described above:



Incidentally, I created the template itself in about 20 seconds, by double clicking on an MS Project file a client had sent me by e-mail, then exporting it from OP!