[EugeneB]

Can I sort projects by Name?

[wilsonng]

If you are in planning mode and you have the left sidebar shown, you can only manually sort. There is no automatic alphabetical sort. It works out best for you because you might want to arrange the order of the projects to fit your life better.

For example, I have my folders arranged like this:

1. Bills & Errands
2. Office work
3. Family
4. Personal development


When I wake up in the morning, I can see my bills and errands first. Then I get to see what I have planned for work. Then I remind myself of things to do for my family. Next I see my personal development projects.

On Sundays, I like to do my weekly review and arrange my projects in terms of importance or priority. I look to put higher priority projects placed higher up and drop lower priority projects lower.

I wouldn't want the ability to sort alphabetically because it would disrupt my manual sorting. I like to be able to keep that order preserved.

[EugeneB]

Thanks! It works great when you have 20-30 projects. I have more then 200 :)

[whpalmer4]

I think perhaps you misunderstood wilsonng's suggestion. It is quite workable with many projects, because the projects are first grouped into folders, then sorted. On Sundays, he nudges projects around in their respective groups to reflect their current priority (all else being equal, actions are presented in the order their containing projects appear in the sidebar, so all the actions for his Bills & Errands folder appear before the actions for Office work, and so on). The only time something gets rearranged is when there's a shift in priorities. Putting related projects in folders in this fashion also allows you to focus on actions from a given area. If you have your projects structured in that fashion, and you're at the office, selecting the Office work folder and clicking the focus button will have OmniFocus restrict your view to only those projects, or only the actions from those projects if in Context mode. All of the actions relating to taking your kid to school, picking up groceries and dry cleaning, getting a better deal on your cell phone contract, etc. vanish from sight until you clear the focus.

Now, that being said, if you want OmniFocus to rearrange your projects by name on command, it is easily achieved. Select the projects you wish to rearrange in the sidebar, then select Edit->Sort->(desired sort key, in this case, By Name). Note that the sort happens independently for each cluster of projects if you don't select a fully contiguous block, so sorting

Destroy anthill
Bowl a perfect game
<non-selected project>
Analyze phone bill
Allocate investment capital

by name results in:

Bowl a perfect game
Destroy anthill
<non-selected project>
Allocate investment capital
Analyze phone bill

You can also use this same technique to reorder the actions in a given project. Select the actions (in the outline panel), Edit->Sort->(sort key) and you are done.

It is important to understand that this rearranges the actions/projects and changes the order they will be presented as next actions. Changing the sorting of the display with the view bar does not change the order. Before you rearrange actions, make sure that you understand the difference! If you have a sequential project, you probably do not want to sort them by name, for example!

[EugeneB]

Thnks! That is it! Should be in the manual :)

[whpalmer4]

Well, it is described in the built-in help for the Edit menu, which appears if you do a search for "sort". I would agree that both manual and built-in help are often short on describing how you might use the program, even when the tools you might use are described, if ever so briefly.