[sir42]

Is anyone else experiencing this problem:

I currently sync my work computer, home computer and iPhone. Before leaving the office I sync my computer one last time to make sure all of my updates are on my MobileMe server. I then open up my iPhone database and can confirm that all of the changes that I made during the day have been properly synced to the server.

However, when I came home at night, only half of the changes that I made during the day come through. Most of the new actions that I added to the database on my work machine show up on my home computer. However, all of the actions marked as completed at work, were still showing up as overdue on my home computer. Even worse, the actions that I had modified during the day (either by changing the wording of the action slightly or the start/due date) do not sync back to my computer.

I then open up the database on my iPhone, and it now shows the screwy database from my home computer - remember, right before I left the office it was showing the freshly updated sync from my work computer.

So somehow half of the changes from my work machine make it back to my home computer and half don't even though I know that the server initially receives those changes.

This has been happening for the last couple of weeks, and none of the builds seem to be addressing this. My trial was out for the desktop software, so I paid the $80 for it, plus the $20 for the iPhone software and I'm really starting to feel bummed about my purchase. It's just not working!

[Lizard]

[We're tracking this issue internally as bug 48521.]

Do you recall whether your home machine had synced everything before you headed off to work?

[sir42]

I'm *mostly* sure that my home machine synced everything. I made a lot of changes to my home machine over the weekend and when I came into the office, it looked like almost everything synced over. However, I did recall being unsure about a couple of items.

I'm glad to know that you guys are tracking this. I sent an email to support a few days ago about this but I hadn't heard anything back. It's nice to know that this is a real bug, and not just a fault on my end, and that you guys are actively working towards a fix. Otherwise I just feel kind of lost in space. It would be nice if there were a list of known bugs/issues.

[soccerplayer]

Just wanted to state that I'm having the exact same issue between my iphone and the desktop application.

[beharkey]

Yup, me too. Check out my problems in this thread.

[Lizard]

To clarify, we recognize that there's something funny going on here and that a number of you are seeing similar issues. We don't have enough details yet to have pinned down the problem, and we can't work on a fix until we do. So please, if you have some specific steps that seem to demonstrate the problem, post them in this thread, or better yet email them to omnifocus@omnigroup.com with 48521 in the subject

I'm having the same basic issues. Each night, I work with OmniFocus on my Mac and definitely sync before I quit it. During the day, I sometimes add things on my iPhone. I'm syncing by iDisk. When I come home at night and open OmniFocus, I get a warning about how something has happened and it needs to reload the database from the iDisk. Then, frequently some part of the updates I made on the phone fail to come over to the Mac. Once it was a change in a due date, today it was both a completed item and a change in name for a context. Even worse, sometimes the previous versions propagate back to the phone. I have a very simple setup, with .Mac, an iDisk, all Macs on 10.5.4, a new iPhone 3G.

I can see that a fair amount of care went into the design of OmniFocus, in particular into the iPhone app. One thing to remember, however, is that the number one thing a personal information management app like OmniFocus must get right in order to satisfy the customer is rock solid reliability as a custodian of people's life information. If the app seems unreliable or flaky, weird sync behavior etc, that will likely cancel out all the hard work and wonderful design that went in, in terms of the impression made on the user. For that reason, it might almost be better to go with a more subdued beta.

I guess I'll have to abandon use of OmniFocus on the Mac for now until a production release of the new version. I think I can still use it profitably just on the phone.

[chidmf]

Yup, similar issues for me. Link here.

[Zapodidae]

Here's my situation:

1. I make a bunch of changes to due dates on tasks on my iPhone and also add some tasks

2. Sync with server from my iPhone

3. Check the time stamp on iDisk to make sure the OF file has been updated

4. Open OF on my Mac, is prompts me to reopen to reflect new changes

5. New tasks show up, but tasks where I've changed due dates are not consistently updated.

6.OF on my Mac over-writes the iDisk file and my changes are lost.

I'm leaving this week for 10 days and I'm travelling only with my iPhone. I'm going to come home with 10 days worth of OF changes and I'm concerned about losing my work. How can I protect myself?

[Lizard]

Zapodidae: To protect your data while we figure out what's going on...
Before you go...
(1) Get the most current data on your iPhone.
(2) Turn off syncing on your Mac

When you get back...
(1) Make sure the iPhone is all synced up to your iDisk
(2) Copy the file from your iDisk to your Mac and double-click it to open in OmniFocus and confirm it has all the changes from your iPhone.
(3) Move aside the OmniFocus.ofocus file from ~/Library/Application Support/OmniFocus.ofocus and launch OmniFocus. It should be a reset database with just example data in it.
(4) Turn syncing back on
(5) It will probably ask you whether to use your Local or Server database. Choose Server so the iDisk data is used.

Obviously, this would be tedious to do if you were using both machines actively, so for everyone else, please rest assured that we are working to figure this out and get a fix out soon.