[orangebird]

I'm trying to sync OF with iCal. When I go to the Preferences to set that up, I don't have any calendars listed, even though I do have several in iCal.

On the left side of the Preferences under Calendars, I have
(Unsynchronized)
No Category

That's it. I know I have synced iCal and OF before on a different Mac without problems, but that was under Snow Leopard.

I'm running Lion (10.7.2) and do have iCloud set up. Maybe my calendars are now in the cloud and OF can't see them.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Thank you.

[Brian]

Moving your post to a thread in the iCal Syncing forum which has the information you're looking for, orangebird. Hope this helps!

[orangebird]

Brian, thanks for the help. Am I correct in reading that this feature has been abandoned?

[katepalese]

so the questions roll in because the directions DO NOT MENTION IT HAS TO BE A LOCAL CALENDAR. All it says is "Drag context names into the calendar name you’d like to synchronize them with. " so since there are no calendars visible people get confused.

[onthewire]

Hi, I have followed these instruction explicitly, however the <On My Mac> calendar still does not appear in the OmniFocus Preference panel?? Any ideas?

[Brian]

Sorry for the trouble, onthewire!

Off the top of my head, I can't remember what causes that, but I know we've helped customers having that happen before - if you give our support ninjas a call at 800.315.6664 or email us, we'll get it sorted out.

[osric]

Ugh. Discontinued? I'm a longtime user of OmniFocus and just discovered the feature. I've been trying for years to replicate the old "rollover to-dos" functionality we had on the Newton. You could check a box on the to-do and if you didn't finish it on the current day it would appear on the next. While OmniFocus doesn't do that per se, it gets close.

I rely heavily on iCal on my iPhone, iPad and Mac, so being able to get at least some of my OmniFocus tasks into iCal would be much better than having to use OmniFocus exclusively. There are some personal to-dos, like shopping items and errands, that would be useful to roll over. If I didn't get the car washed on Wednesday, I'd like to see it on my calendar list for Thursday at the same time. Having to deal with multiple apps for my calendar and time-based to-dos is annoying.

Maybe I'm asking to much of OmniFocus and iCal? Or is there a way to do this that I've missed?

[graffy100]

PS This controversy reminds me of how Office for Mac doesn't support .ics, Google Calendar etc. Tons of users wondering how a company could behave so irrationally.

I really hope OF integrates with iCloud, especially in light of the announcement of Mountain Lion.

[Brian]

Osric, you don't mention which editions of OmniFocus you have, but the Forecast view in the iPhone and iPad editions may be helpful. That feature will come to the Mac eventually but isn't there yet.

A screenshot of the iPhone version can be found here; the iPad edition's version looks like this.

If it would be helpful to have a view like that in the Mac app, let us know and we can attach you to that feature request. Request frequency is one of the metrics we use when planning the work on our apps.

For what it's worth, Apple itself is moving away from shoving ToDos into iCal and Mail; OS 10.8 is going to have a "Reminders" app that handles them separately. Screenshots and info available here.

[MrLikeable]

Hi Brian and Omni.

I've read through this thread, and I'd love you to work on a link specifically between OmniFocus and Reminders (for OS 10.8+ / iOS 5.x+).

Also, I would absolutely love it to be based on a single tag or check box available for every task and repeating task in my OF database; not as a specific synced context (though that would be a workable alternative).

Why?

1. My preferred task management system is, unsurprisingly, OF. My workflow is a combination of long term (yearly, bimonthly) reviews and weekly reviews on my iMac, coupled with InBox task entry on iPhone and iPad. I'll often check projects and look at different perspectives - including the wonderful Forecast - on the iPhone and iPad, and do quite a bit of checking off tasks as I go. But the bulk of the heavy organisational work is done on the desktop.

2. The Reminders app is so elegant on the phone in particular. I've split my database of recurring tasks a little bit, so that some just pop up as reminders on my phone, including a piece of music that catches my attention and tells me to stop what I'm doing and get focused. I also use Siri sometimes to enter data quickly into Reminders. So I'm using both OmniFocus and Reminders (and of course iCal) with success, but it could be better and more seamless.

My preferred, ideal future set up would allow me to do all of my weekly workflow management on my iMac in OmniFocus, including maintaining all my routine / repeating tasks there, and allowing me to simply check the tasks that I'd like to appear in Reminders (not have to make them all a particular context), and that would be it; everything else would happen in the background. (Anything that I'd checked would simply alert me at its start time in Reminders in my phone, and when I'd done it, I'd check it, and it would be checked off automatically in OF too.)

I'm not sure it can be done of course, but I'd love it if you could...

That's my preference / request, and thanks for your consideration.