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Recommendation: Coalesce your OmniFocus database regularly Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
I was an early adopter of OmniFocus, and continue to use it as my primary software tool for GTD. So by the time OmniFocus for the iPhone was released, I had a good number of folders, projects, and tasks that made up my database to be ~10MB. Consequently, for the same reasons discussed in this forum by other early adopters, I was very disappointed with my initial experience with OmniFocus on the iPhone and went back to paper and pen for capture.

Then Lizard published his Coalesce script for compressing the OmniFocus database and presto! OmniFocus on the iPhone became usable for Capture and Do on the go. In fact the Coalesce script, along with some pruning of completed projects and tasks, took my database down from 10MB to just 48KB!

I thought this was a one-off project until I noticed that launches and syncs of OF on the iPhone were taking more and more time to open and complete - to the point that the program became unusable again. So I've begun to coalesce my database approximately every two-weeks, and pruning completed projects and tasks during my weekly review religiously. So far this has allowed OF for the iPhone to stay in one of the four coveted spots on my dock, but the downside is that there are a few steps to coalescing the database and its probably not recommended for beginners and casual users.

So my recommendation and hope is that the good folks at OmniGroup will implement the coalesce functionality into OF before the final release of V1.1. I would appreciate getting an opinion from the Omni Ninjas and other forum users whether they feel this is a viable long term solution.
 
They have implemented it. However, it may not run very often, depending on your usage pattern and the number of OmniFocus clients you have. If you get all the clients synced up and then do two syncs with an hour or more between them, the latest Sneaky Peek releases should run the compaction code.
 
Yes, mine is compacting "automagically" and I haven't done a manual coalescing in many weeks. The key is keeping all your clients synced and up-to-date.

-Dennis
 
Instead of eliminating completed actions/projects from the database, I just set up a monthly recurring "Send old data to archive" action in my Mac context.

Folks that do a lot of mac-to-mac syncing are likely seeing their database grow less than folks with an iPhone in their sync setup. Next version of the iPhone app will incorporate a change that lets us compact more often.
 
Any ETA on that phone update? That's definitely the weak link in my setup.
 
 


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