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Hello,

I'm a new user of OmniFocus for Mac/iPad, and had the following questions:

1. I'm trying to create a planning "context" perspective that shows all tasks that exist in "Active" projects. (I know how to do this with a "project" perspective; but since I need this sync'd with OF for iPad, it seems I need to create a "context" perspective.) My context folder is set to "active", and my availability filter is set to "remaining". Unfortunately, the resulting list additionally contains my "On Hold" projects (which I don't want to see in this view).

Am I doing something wrong?

2. Perhaps this should be posted in the iPad forum, but I can't seem to find a way to re-order tasks on the iPad. I was hoping for drag-n-drop, but I can't find any way to do that. Is cut/paste the only way?

Thanks so much,

-- Matt
 
I don't know about perspectives.

If you focus on the project you wish to re-order tasks in and click edit in the top middle, you can then drag tasks up or down.
 
One addition to Geoff's post about drag-and-drop rearrangement:

You can't drag something to be the last item in a group, because there's no way for the code to decide whether you wanted the item you are dragging to be the last item of the group, or the first item after the group, so it assumes the latter (probably the correct choice most of the time, but it never seems that way when I'm editing :-)

So, if you have a straight list of items in your project, and you wanted to group some of them into an action group, the quickest workflow is to add the one which will be the last one in the group first (using the Move button in the editor), which will then allow you to drag the other items in rather than using the Move button.

If that doesn't make sense, say so and I'll post some diagrams when I have a bit more time.
 
The perspective question is a little bit tricky. To eliminate the remaining actions from your On Hold projects, you need to start in Project mode, set the Project filter to Active, then select all the projects in the sidebar, right-click (or control-click) and choose Focus. Now you have a Project mode window showing only the active projects, and if you switch to context mode, it will only show the actions from the active projects. Make your view settings, save as a perspective, and you should be able to sync it over to your iPad. The rub here is that when your list of active projects changes (new projects added, old ones finished or dropped or put on hold), your perspective will not automatically be updated. If your active project list is relatively stable, the need to rebuild that perspective on occasion shouldn't be a big issue.

Another way to approach this would be to change the availability filter to Available instead of Remaining. That would obviously filter out all the material from On Hold projects and show you only the items you could actually work on right now. This is fine for a view where you are choosing what to work on, but not so useful if you need to look at what is beyond the next action.

Yet another tactic you could use if you don't like rebuilding the perspective would be to use a perspective that focuses on a folder. You could have two top-level folders, one with active work and the other with stuff that is inactive. To build the perspective, select the active folder, right-or-control-click and select Focus, switch to Context mode, and set up your display. Save as a perspective and sync to iPad. You could even mark the inactive folder as dropped. Now you just move a project into the active folder when you are working on it, and the inactive folder when it goes into hibernation. You can of course have additional organizational structure under those two top-level folders.

My recommendation is that even if one of these approaches seems superior to the others, that you try them all out as a familiarization exercise. You can set up some test projects in a folder or two at the bottom of the sidebar so you don't have to experiment on your production data. Also, use the Contact Omni item in the gear menu on the iPad to send in a vote for supporting Project mode perspectives on the iPad (and any other changes you'd like — feedback sent that way is guaranteed to be seen and counted when making decisions about development scheduling, unlike forum posts).
 
 


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