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I'm pretty new to OF, and liking it a lot. One of the things that has been useful to me is that when I check an item off, it is available to me in a "Completed Items" perspective ... I've changed the format prefs so the completed items are not struck-through, and are thus more easily read in that view, and there's a Completed Date column, so I can look at the items and tell instantly when they were done (which is often helpful to me.)

I understand that these are going to quickly add up and increase the file size, so I plan to use Move Old Data to Archive. But before I do, I have some questions.

1) At about what file size should I start worrying about too many completed items slowing thing down (I do sync OF from laptop to iPhone).

2) Are the items in the archive indexed - and thus accessible - by spotlight?

3) When I open the archive file, does the main OF file stay open, or is it replaced the archive file?

4) Can archiving only be done manually? In other words, I can't have items more than 45 days old move over automatically ... I have to physically set a date each time I want to archive. Yes?

Thanks in advance,

rb
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by rogbar View Post
1) At about what file size should I start worrying about too many completed items slowing thing down (I do sync OF from laptop to iPhone).
I'm not sure at what point you'll start to see the slowdown, because I'm way past it :-) I can however tell you that the iPod touch and the iPhone 3GS can handle 5000+ actions and 500+ projects, which in my case comes out to about a 2.5-2.6 MB file. The desktop app starts getting noticeably sluggish with a database of that size when run on somewhat outdated hardware (late 2006 vintage 2 GHz MacBook w/Core 2 Duo & 2 GB, or 2.1 GHz iMac G5 & 2.5 GB) but will function considerably beyond that point. I didn't do any archiving or pruning of completed projects until I got the iPod, and my database was over 2x that size. I can't say what level of responsiveness anyone else would find acceptable.
Quote:
2) Are the items in the archive indexed - and thus accessible - by spotlight?
Unfortunately, only items in the active database are indexed; OF deletes the Spotlight data file for the project as soon as the project is marked complete or dropped, and anything archived by the built-in archiver will not be indexed as it has been marked complete. Anything you might archive manually, even if you try to trick the program by not marking it completed, won't have an index file for Spotlight that points to the right place. I'm not sure this is the design choice I would have made, but perhaps there are good reasons for it that are not apparent from where I sit. It might be possible to force indexing of the archive with a bit of skulduggery, but you can also just open the archive and use the normal OF search if you don't need Spotlight's special abilities.
Quote:
3) When I open the archive file, does the main OF file stay open, or is it replaced the archive file?
It stays open. You can have multiple OF files open at once, though usually you'll only want to make changes to the active database. You can restore items from backups by opening the backup file and just dragging the action or project you wanted back into your active file. You can also archive in this fashion, if you don't want to do it strictly on a date basis -- just drag a copy of the completed or dropped project to the archive file, then delete from the regular database.
Quote:
4) Can archiving only be done manually? In other words, I can't have items more than 45 days old move over automatically ... I have to physically set a date each time I want to archive. Yes?
That's true if you use the File->Move Old Data to Archive command, to the best of my knowledge. I like a bit more control over what stays and what goes, so I would probably cobble up a script to show me the completed/dropped projects of a certain age, and manually pick and choose the ones to send to the archive. An obvious improvement would be to devise a way of marking projects that I wanted to keep in the database so that the script would ignore them on future runs.

One thing done by the archive command that may or may not be of value is that it also ferrets out completed actions from projects that are still active and moves them to the archive. Tossing completed projects into the archive isn't too much trouble, especially if you aren't trying to maintain an elaborate structure there, but getting rid of those daily repeating actions is a nuisance if you want to keep them in the archive. It might be nice if Omni could provide an Archive command that worked only on the selected projects, moving either the entire project if completed or dropped, or simply the completed actions if still active. That would allow you to pick and choose what got archived and let you strip the deadwood out of those projects or single-action lists with endlessly repeating actions.
 
 


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