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I have a series of daily tasks, each set to repeat weekly. IOW each day of the week has a set of tasks that will recur on the same day every week. They are all in a single-action list called "daily checklist", and all are flagged. They have start and due dates at different times on the same day.

Sometimes I do not check off an item until after its due time has passed.

Problem: Each day, several tasks are duplicated when they recur. E.g. the task "Write for 15 minutes" is checked off, and a week later when the start date arrives, there are two tasks called "Write for 15 minutes" with identical start and due times.

This is not true of every task. At first I thought I must have set up the tasks incorrectly, so I stopped repeats on of the twin actions, then checked both off. But even after verifying there were no duplicates pending, I'm finding that they keep occurring. I can't see a pattern in the actions' Added or Changed timestamps.

Before reporting a bug, I want to see if I'm doing something wrong. I've checked the manual and searched the forums, but found no insight into the problem.

Could OmniSync be duplicating some repeating actions?
 
What you likely want is a repeating task that only reappears at a certain time (one day, one week ...) after completion of the outstanding task rather than just appears consistently after a certain time even if the new duplicates a still outstanding task. Unless I misunderstand, I suspect others will confirm, this is not possible in the current version of OF (though is possible in Things).
 
Hi Alarob,

By design, each time a repeating action is completed in OmniFocus it
spawns a new action. So what I think that happens in your case (what I do very often accidentally as well) is that you check a repeating task, and uncheck it at some point. Therefore Omnifocus will automatically create a duplicate of you repeating task.

I hope that in the future, Omnifocus will automatically delete the
spawned action when un-marking a task that has been already marked
complete. That would fix this problem.
 
There are other odd consequences of the "replicate on completion scheme".

If you have two clients and you complete a repeating task on both, then sync, you'll end up with three: one completed, and two replicated ones. I fall into this trap fairly regularly.

It's weird but at least nothing is lost.

If the task were cloned then deleted on completion then there's the possibility that during a sync changes made on one client (e.g. to the note) could be irretrievably lost.

The transactional nature of the Omnifocus sync scheme has lots of up sides, but this isn't one of them :-)
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by DrJJWMac View Post
What you likely want is a repeating task that only reappears at a certain time (one day, one week ...) after completion of the outstanding task ....
No, in this case I prefer that tasks start (become available) at the assigned time.

Quote:
spawns a new action. So what I think that happens in your case (what I do very often accidentally as well) is that you check a repeating task, and uncheck it at some point. Therefore Omnifocus will automatically create a duplicate of you repeating task.
I don't think I am inadvertently unchecking items after checking them. However I am inconsistent about whether I check them off with the iPhone or desktop app.

So I wonder whether Omni Sync is the real culprit here. It's more convenient than syncing with Bonjour, but I may return to Bonjour tonsee whether these problems persist.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alarob View Post
So I wonder whether Omni Sync is the real culprit here. It's more convenient than syncing with Bonjour, but I may return to Bonjour tonsee whether these problems persist.
FWIW, I've reported a similar bug. Mine goes something like:

* Have repeating project ("weekly chores" or similar);
* Complete project, then edit project in one place after completing it
* Sync other places
* Repeating project appears more than once, except only one copy has the new data I added.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by intranation View Post
FWIW, I've reported a similar bug. Mine goes something like:

* Have repeating project ("weekly chores" or similar);
* Complete project, then edit project in one place after completing it
* Sync other places
* Repeating project appears more than once, except only one copy has the new data I added.
Are you using Omni Sync or some other sync method?
 
I haven't fully explored the wrinkles yet, but I've discovered a useful feature of repeating groups:

If a group repeats at 00:00 every day, and starts today, and one of it's subtasks starts at a specific time today, when the group repeats the subtask start time is bumped a day too. This allows project structures like:

- Chores: start today at 00:00, repeat after one day, parallel, auto complete
-- Morning: auto complete
--- lots of tasks here -> MorningContext
-- Evening: start today at 18:00, auto complete
--- lots of tasks here -> EveningContext

When the root task becomes complete and it's all replicated for tomorrow, the evening group gets a start time of tomorrow at 18:00, which is of course exactly what I want.

I think there's a case for some central browsable repository for little recipes like this - I've been using OF for a couple of years and I'm still discovering things like this!
 
I have exactly the same problem. I use OmniFocus on my Mac and iPhone. I have several repeating tasks such a watering plants etc. I check off tasks in desktop app or iPhone app. It's not always the same device. I've been using the OmniFocus server for syncing, but the repeating tasts starts duplicating. So now I'm trying sync by Bonjour, but I think this won't solve the problem! I started this sync method yesterday (I still check off some task on desktop app and some in iPhone app) and I already have duplicated task. It starts being very annoying. I hope the OmniFocus will take care of this, because the apps are not cheap. I don't want to be forced to change OmniFocus for Things.
 
Changing sync methods is very unlikely to change the occurence of these duplicate items.

The thing that will help is to sync each device as you start and stop using it. Obviously, this is just a workaround. We're tracking the bug so that we can provide a proper fix.
 
 


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