[coconino]

I want to have my personal tasks and work tasks on my iPhone but I would prefer not to have personal tasks transferred to my work Mac as I'm in an open environment with others having acces to my desktop. Also, while it is my own initiative to use OF for my work, it would be useful if colleagues could have access to my work-related database. I'm prepared to buy mobileme or another copy of OF if this is the solution.

[Brian]

OmniFocus doesn't have that kind of conditional syncing - we can't sync your whole database on the home machine and the iPhone while only syncing with the work portion of your database on the other machine.

If you use the Send Feedback item in the help menu, we can get that filed in our database for consideration down the line, though. Thanks!

[coconino]

Thanks for that. Do you think there's any sort of workaround possible involving export function? I don't mind a kludge that works. My fall-back plan is to just keep my database on the iPhone and sync with home, and accept that I can't edit it on the big machine at work. It does seem like a shortcoming, and I'll do as you say and send feedback.

[Brian]

I suppose you could export your database to a USB drive which you carried with you to work. OmniFocus at work could then have both databases open on your work machine.

However, the USB stick would essentially be a read-only copy of your information on that machine; I can't think of a good way to easily get changes you made on the USB stick back into OmniFocus on your home machine while still preserving your ability to sync the iPhone. (Well, without doing a lot of sync preference swapping every day.)

[coconino]

The object is to work with both my personal and work stuff on the iPhone, and my work stuff on the work Mac, without transferring my personal stuff to work. It doesn't matter to me to have the work data on my home machine, so my fall-back position is to just run OF on the home Mac and iPhone and just use the iPhone for work. I'm not clear why you're suggesting having two databases open on the work machine. Could sync preference swapping be scripted? I could probably manage that, if given some hints. Thanks for your help.

[Lizard]

I think Brian swapped work and home. But yeah, the iPhone can only have one database on it at a time, so you'd have to do some crazy sync swapping if you want separate home and work databases.

You can sort of script this swap by emailing yourself the settings for both sync configurations (which could just be two different folders on the same WebDAV server). There will still be some buttons to tap, but no fussing with lots of typing.
To switch which database you've got on the phone:
1) Sync the iPhone with the current database
2) Find the email with the settings for the other DB and tap the link
3) OF will launch and ask for confirmation
4) Sync OF to the new database and choose "Server" when it asks whether to use "Server" or "Local" -- this is very important!

I suspect that will be too much bother to use on a regular basis.

[Nomad]

If there was a some kind of password protected "lock" on the personal folder... then only one DB would be necessary.... Just a thought...

[SpiralOcean]

I have the same setup. Recently I combined my OF database to include work and home items.

I have two context groups:
home
-computer
-errands
-calls

work
-computer
-errands
-calls

This allows me to focus on work at work and home at home and have all of it on my iPhone.

There is a slight problem with only seeing items in the iPhone for work that need to be done today. I solve this in two ways:
• flag items to get done today - these items I only flag from work projects
• due dates - this is what I'm using now. Creating projects that are due and using the due date flags on the iPhone to determine what I work with.