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Repeat first Wednesday or last Monday of month Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
I have tasks that repeat on the first Wednesday of every month and others on the last Monday. I haven't found a good method for this. What I do is repeat every four weeks and then, before completing the task, I manually check the calendar to see if the next instance should be after 4 or after 5 weeks.

This is a pain and when I'm in a hurry, I sometimes get it wrong or even forget that I must do this. In fact, for the tasks that I really can't miss I have switched to using Apple's Calendar which lets me repeat on a specific week day of the month.

Any hope for a fix in OF? Or maybe someone has a better method to suggest.

Thanks,
Ellen
 
Still a workaround, but you could set up six or twelve months at a time (and make a task to do that again for the next round).
 
Your suggestion is still better than my current method. I'll try it.
Thanks.

Is there a place where I can vote for a fix for this, or officially ask for one? Maybe lots of people need it but not many come here to say so. They just find a workaround like yours.
 
To make a feature request, or ask a question and be guaranteed an answer from Omni, use Help->Send Feedback.
 
I checked my mail archive and found that I sent feedback on this exact subject during the first week of my trial period in September 2008. Four years ago!

The reply was : “I've added your suggestion into our database. (We could really use this ourselves.)”.

It was the first thing I missed in OF. I got used to my crummy workaround and just recently got really annoyed with it.

Well, well. There must be some really big hurdles to get this into OF. And I just realized with some surprise that we're still at version 1. So, here's to hoping for a version 2...

Ellen
 
I only promise that submitting such a request will get it to the right people, not that they will necessarily drop everything and fulfill the request. I'm sure that if no other requests for features had been received, you would have gotten it by now, but I'm personally acquainted with quite a few requests, and I don't think everyone else is shy, either :-). They take the number of requests for a feature into account when planning their work, but I haven't heard anyone say that the age of the request is given any consideration.

Another workaround is to put a repeating event in iCal (which does offer such repeat options) that says "hey, put an action to do XYZ in OmniFocus" — with a bit more effort, you could come up with some AppleScript to run as part of that iCal notification that inserts the action for you.
 
There is a command line program called remind that is available in the macports tree. Couple this with the tools that OF has for sucking actions out of email.

Remind has a rather arcane syntax in the reminder file, but you can do things like "Remind me 3 days before the third Sunday after the second full moon after the Fall equinox" First Thursday, and last Monday of the month aren't bad at all. The documentation has a ton of examples. Install the program, add an entry to Cron for it, and edit your remind list.


AFAIK remind's code is under either GPL or BSD license.

Since this sort of reminder isn't needed very often, it may be easier for the Omni Group to have it as a server, and you log into a web site and have a fancy GUI for creating and testing events like this.
 
I just sent in the below feature request, exactly along these lines. It would help me a lot!

(I hadn't thought of the suggestion somewhere up-thread to use a calendar event to trigger the monthly creation of the OmniFocus task, thus allowing me to mess with the start date however each month. For this route to work for me it definitely has to be automated, which would be simple with applescript. Seems like an excellent suggestion, but I will have to think about whether the extra complexity is worth it to me, particularly in that it puts an additional potential failure point in the process of making sure repeating events get in front of me at the right time. But, it might be worth it. If I go that route I'm much more likely to go with a launchd item as I already run a ton of custom timed scripts through there for other tasks.)

----


I really like the feature of "Repeat Every" and choosing a weekday. The killer aspect of it for me is e.g.: I can set something to repeat every Thursday with a due date of Sunday and then during the actual week I can push the start date of the event back without messing up future occurrences. (e.g. at my house I need to run the septic pump for 10-15 minutes some time each week before Sunday night to avoid having the alarm go off in the middle of the night when the water filter flushes - don't ask why… Because I'm sometimes out of town on the weekends I set the event to repeat every thursday with a due date of sunday evening. If I'm going to be in town I can delay the start date until the weekend when it's more convenient without screwing up the timing of the repeating event the following week.)

Feature request: It would be incredibly useful to me to extend this "Repeat every" functionality to:
- day of month (e.g. "Repeat every 23rd of the month", and it would be great to also include "Repeat every 2nd Tuesday". But, just the "Nth of the month" would be huge for me.)
- day/month of the year (e.g. "Repeat every June 1st")

The above features would be very useful to me for bill paying and a variety of other tasks. e.g. have "Pay Bank X's credit card bill" repeat every Nth of the month when it comes available, but allowing me to push the start date as appropriate each month to hide it from myself until I'm going to pay it. Similarly for some annual tasks that come available on one date and may not be due for 3 months. I want them to be repeating and come available on that same date next year, but they are also not a high priority to take care of immediately at the start of their 3 month window.
 
I have used OF for about a year and one of the features it was missing is the first (or second or whatever day) weekday of a month. Because this missing link I started using Things, THL, 2do and they all have this feature. It's the same as offering a reoccurring item every week on a particular day (which OF does), something happen on a particular day of a month, and getting things done on that day needs to managed by a GTD manager in a proper way.
After using 2do for about 6 months I'm back to OF (2do, Thing, THL are nice but missing some of the much needed features OF has -> beside that missing link)
Hopefully in the coming release of version2 it will be added (IS IT?)
 
V2 private release is no more but it never was a chance to add features. Only when 2 is out and reconciled with the iOS version (which now also has to change) will there be attention paid to new features. Expect a long wait.
 
 


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