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Utterly lost confidence in this... Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
I'm using a first gen iPhone with latest firmware update and latest omnifocus for iphone (not desktop). Today I was using the phone at my desk, ticking off tasks and using the desktop to compose emails. When I slid the bar to unlock the iphone screen, omnifocus had quit. When I tried to open omnifocus, it had reset its database and I was left with the default settings and few tasks you see when you first install the program. All of my projects, tasks etc - gone.

I've emailed support (no response yet), but suspect the only way back is to try to restore the iphone. Problem is, I'll lose a week of data if I do that, and presumably a week's worth of podcasts, calendar and contacts entries as well (Is that right?). I've totally lost confidence in this "product" which is clearly still in the beta stage, and unreliable.

Task management is key to Getting Things Done, and if I can't rely on a product to be stable I don't think I can trust it to re-enter all of my data again, just to risk losing it all again in some random glitch of the program. Does anyone have any idea how I can recover my data?
 
We've had a small number of users report this problem - OmniFocus is not running, but when they start it up, the database has been replaced with the default one.

We're not sure what's causing this, because the reports we've gotten have included occasions when it happened while OmniFocus was not running, which is really baffling. Thus far, we haven't been able to provoke the problem on our phones, so it's hard to know exactly what's going on.

We'd really appreciate any info you can provide - were you in airplane mode, had you installed or updated OmniFocus or any other applications to the phone recently?

Unfortunately, if you didn't have synchronization active, the only way to recover from this is to restore the phone to your last backup. Repeating for anyone else that may read this: you can synchronize the phone with itself to basically have an "offsite backup" of the data - we recommend that folks do this whenever possible.

We'd like to gather a bit more information about what happened - I tried searching for support emails from the same address that you used to register on the forums, but I'm not getting any hits. Can you send another email, but this time send it to urgent@omnigroup.com, or let us know the ticket number that the system assigned to you?

Needless to say, I'm very sorry for the trouble.

Last edited by Brian; 2008-09-15 at 12:35 PM..
 
I've lost all my iPhone data by doing this:
* in iTunes, log out of the app store and back in with a different name.
* Plug my iPhone in and sync it.
* It wiped my entire iphone 3rd party apps because I was not the authorized user, as well as deleting my songs from my iPod, without warning me until after it was complete.
* I logged out of the iTunes store and back in with my normal account.
* I synced with the iPhone again. Everything was reinstalled, but without data.

If I had thought of it at the time, restoring from a backup might have helped but I didn't loose too much data myself (I'm not using anything like OmniFocus yet ).
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian View Post
Repeating for anyone else that may read this: you can synchronize the phone with itself to basically have an "offsite backup" of the data - we recommend that folks do this whenever possible.
Not sure what you mean by synchronizing the phone with itself. Please explain?
 
You set up the phone for syncing via WebDAV to your MobileMe account, but you don't set up any other phones or Macs to do so. Every time the phone syncs, the data is copied to the server. Now the data is in two places, not just one, and if something happens to the copy on the phone (wiped out by an errant upgrade, for example), you can recover it (as of the time of the last sync) from the server by setting up sync on the phone again and telling it to use the server copy.
 
Thanks! Of course, this doesn't apply to people (like me) using only the iPhone app, not the desktop app -- they don't sync.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by HiramvdG View Post
Thanks! Of course, this doesn't apply to people (like me) using only the iPhone app, not the desktop app -- they don't sync.
No, it applies to everyone. You don't need the desktop app to do what I just described.
 
For Brian:

Apologies for delay - have been away diving! The ticket number is OG #359697. It was forwarded to urgent@omnigroup.com on 12 Sept but no reply yet! The phone was not in airplane mode. I had upgraded Omnifocus a week or two earlier, along with a few free apps. In the event, I elected to re-enter my tasks, and Omnifocus has behaved itself since then.
 
Had this happen to me this morning. The touch was almost out of battery (in fact, the first couple of times I pressed the sleep button, it didn't come on). When it did come on, I entered a task in the inbox and hit the sleep button. When I got to work, I plugged the touch into my laptop and let it charge for a bit. When I started OF, I got the default database. I tried syncing from iTunes, which first did a backup probably erasing the db on the laptop (if there was one there...). It still has the default db. I've got a two-week-old MobileMe backup, so I'll at least get my contexts and projects, but I've lost two weeks of tasks.

Need to remember to sync every night from now on....

Dave Tavener
 
I can reliably cause my Touch to lose all my data. Both version 2.1 and 2.0.2 affected, syncing via WebDAV to my desktop.

1. Charge up and sync.
2. Wait 3 days, charging using AC power in the meantime. Do make it a 3 day weekend and do your week work plan in OMF over the weekend, it makes it extra fun!
3. The number shall be 3, not 2.5. Monday evening of a 3 day weekend. Or Monday morning after you were out of the office for most of Friday. Or on the third day of your speaking trip across the continent.
4. No syncing!
5. Open up OmniFocus on the Touch. After all, it's time to sync. Better do it before you sync the rest of the device.
6. Watch your data go away before you can hit sync. If you hit sync anyhow .... I do hope you "Use Server Copy" and not local copy.
 
 


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