[jawspeak]

I want to make sure I don't have too many old tasks sitting around in my omnifocus. And if they are really old, maybe I want to delete them.

I can read metadata about the created time (information about an action), is there a way to filter on that? Or, do math and print another column of the "oldness" of all of the actions?

I'm posting in extras, because I am willing to use AppleScript for this, although I haven't scripted OmniFocus before.

Thanks,
Jonathan

[whpalmer4]

Is there something you need beyond doing a context mode view grouping and sorting by date added? I agree that there isn't a column you can add to show the actual date added, but the grouping feature will give you the following:

Added today
Added yesterday
Added within the last week
Added within the last month
Added within the last 3 months
Added within the last 6 months
Added within the last year
Added more than a year ago

and you can always look at some action in the group listing with the inspector if it is important to know if it is 377 days old or only 376 :)

It wouldn't be too difficult to write a script that spits out a CSV file that lists the age of the actions, but it sounds like you can probably do the equivalent with what is already present in the program.

[jawspeak]

Thanks -- I'd go for this if it would do it on a per-action level. It groups by the project's added date.

Interestingly, it exposes I might be misusing the program. I have some very old projects which I am using more as categories. "Work/People" "Work/Tasks", or "Money" are 3 projects. They will never end, although Action Items I put within there might at some point no longer be important.

Is there a way to do the Group By Added for all Actions, completely ignoring the projects they belong to?

[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by jawspeak

Thanks -- I'd go for this if it would do it on a per-action level. It groups by the project's added date.

Not if you do as I instructed and do this in Context mode :)

Interestingly, it exposes I might be misusing the program. I have some very old projects which I am using more as categories. "Work/People" "Work/Tasks", or "Money" are 3 projects. They will never end, although Action Items I put within there might at some point no longer be important.

I don't think there's any right/wrong way here, but there certainly are multiple approaches. I like to put these collections of effectively never-ending tasks into Single Action Lists because to me, a project is something that has a target to reach, and when you get there, it's complete. You can put action groups inside a SAL if you need a bit of structure, and there are no worries about accidentally blocking the execution of one action because the one above it in the list hasn't completed, whereas with a project (or inside an action group) you need to be careful about that.