[soccerplayer]

Delete

[santra]

It seems to have gotten worse in the last day or two.

It's taking me 2 minutes on a fast wi-fi, and probably 10-20 mins on EDGE (which doesn't really work for me, since my iPhone goes off after 2 mins).

I have 100 or so projects, but only 20 or so active ones; and most of those have 10 or less tasks.

I'm wondering if the database being synced contains items that have been checked off? I have 1000s of those, but don't know how to delete them.

[whpalmer4]

Have a look at the OmniFocus.ofocus file on your MobileMe or WebDAV server -- select the file and right-click on it to get the contextual menu, then choose Show Package Contents. How many files are you seeing after you've synced? And how big is the whole thing?

You can use the File->Move Old Data to Archive... command to move your older completed items out of the active database, which should help speed things up. I think OmniFocus is able to read and write the individual transaction files without having to transfer/rewrite the whole package on each sync, so old stuff that isn't changing shouldn't be quite so much of a burden, but there's not a lot of memory or cpu horsepower on the iPhone, so archiving the old stuff is probably a good plan. One nice feature of the archive command is that it will tell you how many completed items there are before a given date which could be prospectively shuffled out to pasture.

[jmd]

fix for very slow/no sync of iphone to mobile me.

symptoms:
sync of omnifocus on the iphone (omni iphone) seemed to continue endlessly (spinning gears until phone slept or until switched apps)

Fix summary. (see below for more detail)
set iphone not to sync automatically (temp setting)
set iphone not to autolock (temp setting)
prepare omnifocus mac database
archived omni mac data completed items
rebuilt omni mac database
backed up then deleted idisk data
performed sync from omni mac
reset omni iphone database
re-configured omni iphone app for sync
synced omni iphone app
jumped up and down, chanted, and patted forehead three times...

Notes/assumptions:
sync of omnifocus on the mac (omni mac) seemed to work ok and generally took about a minute or so.
differences in iphone and mac data were slight and I could afford to lose latest iphone changes.
original OmniFocus.ofocus file size was 3.5mb on idisk
both mac and iphone on wifi with high speed internet connection.

set iphone not to sync automatically
iphone omnifocus app:settings:auto sync: off
(prevents undesired syncs)

set iphone not to autolock (temp setting)
settings:general:auto-lock: never
(gives time for sync to occur before iphone sleeps and locks)

prepare omnifocus mac database
viewed all completed items. unchecked those that I did not want to archive. to expedite, you can select multiple items in a project (cmd and/or shift click), control click on one of them, and uncheck "complete" from the contextual menu. (note: you may also want to flag these items to find them easily again in case you want to restore them to completed status later.)

archived omni mac data completed items
file:move old data to archive...
set date to yesterday. selected "Move to Archive"
(reduces data file size)

rebuilt omni mac database
file: rebuild database. "Rebuild"
(i suppose it might have been more appropriate to do this prior to archiving?)

backed up then deleted idisk data
quit omni mac (verify omni iphone not syncing)
mounted idisk
navigate to idisk:Documents:
selected all omni docs and did a finder copy to a folder on my mac. note: my idisk data seemed to have extra files besides the main data file which might have been remnants of earlier uncompleted syncs.
these were the items in my docs folder:

OmniFocus.ofocus
OmniFocus.ofocus-copy-in-progress-dKOHBli-8wB
OmniFocus.ofocus-copy-in-progress-fLgmnUCxDWe
OmniFocus.ofocus-copy-in-progress-lgHTJVJTC7-
OmniFocus.ofocus-copy-in-progress-oippbxpLfzl

after copying, attempted to finder delete these items from idisk. this process hung. (probably just an unrelated glitch)
rebooted mac, used safari to visit mobile me:idisk:documents and deleted all of the above omni docs via the web interface. it took two attempts to do this. the main data file remained after the first attempt, but was successfully deleted on the second.

performed sync from omni mac
launched omni mac and synced.
(verified that a new "OmniFocus.ofocus" file was created in idisk:documents)

reset omni iphone database
omni iphone: reset database
(this will delete your data on your iphone and require you to set up omnifocus syncing again)

re-configured omni iphone app for sync
(this is the same procedure originally used to set up iphone syncing)
omni iphone: settings: username
enter username@me.com and dot me password
omni mac:preferences:sync:mobile me: share settings.
omni iphone: get settings from mac. complete dialog to set up omni iphone sync.

synced omni iphone app
omni iphone: click the sync icon (duh)

this worked for me. OmniFocus.ofocus file size decreased slightly to 2.7mb. omni mac sync time decreased slightly. omni phone sync time went from infinite to less than 30 seconds. at this point, after several syncs, none of the OmniFocus.ofocus-copy-in-progress-xxxxxxxx files have re-appeared.

you might want to reset the temporary settings changes in the first two steps above.
you might want to re-complete those items unchecked in step 3 above.

i'm sure that all of the previous steps and precautions were not necessary to fix the problem. if you discover an abbreviated procedure, please post.

jim

[sfkeydel]

jmd,

Thanks for the detailed post, although I have to say that we're now entering Swift's "A Modest Proposal" territory :-)

[lekowicz]

Thanks, JMD. That all worked brilliantly, and my iPhone syncing is now swift. I mean, in the real swift sense, not the Swift sense.

My only change was, since OF on my iPhone NEVER stopped syncing, I could not access the controls to turn auto syncing off. I just deleted then reinstalled the app.

The archiving worked well (unchecking, archiving, and re-checking my long reusable lists, which I hope not to have to do again!). Though the database is the exact same size now (3.2MB), something fun happened in there to make it all work nicely.

Thanks to the Omni folks, too. Can't wait for 1.0.3, Ken.

[mas90guru]

Has this slow synch time been resolved or are we expected to go through a complete self diagnostic to cure our own issues.

I keep looking in App Store to see if there is a fix and nothing has come down.

If the sync is broken for a large number of people I don't see how this app can continue to be sold.

[lekowicz]

I'm brand new to OF, so this is my first post. I have had horrible luck with iPhone syncing the last few days as well. The sync never finishes, regardless of connection type. The Synchronization area in Settings says only "sync currently in progress" and I don't ever see the progress bar any more. I have tried the Reset Database option on the iPhone, and have also reinstalled the app itself. OF on the Mac seems to be working just fine (v77.9.0.103638), as far as I can tell, since my two Mac copies are staying in sync, but this problem seems to have happened directly after one of the Sneaky Peek updates, not the iPhone 1.0.2 update. Maybe. Who can tell for sure? Sigh!

Relevant or irrelevant info: OF database sync file size is only 3.2MB. I have a fairly small collection of projects so far, so I know this is not a database size issue. I don't need to move old data to archive yet.

Just wanted to share that I'm having this issue too.

I was having this same problem over the last couple of days. I followed above instructions, opening the package (OmniFocus.ofocus) file on iDisk. There was 546 files there. I then moved old items to archive, setting the date to 8/1/2008. When I checked the OmniFocus.ofocus package again, the number of files dropped to just a handful. I then synced from my Macbook - selecting local copy when prompted. After this I opend OF on my iPhone and selected server copy when prompted. Everything is back to normal now.

I'll watch this closely. After finally feeling the relief of having control over my crazy project and task list - I was absolutely freaking out at the possibility of losing everything now that I'm trusting OF. Let's hope whatever this isn't lasting and get's fixed soon.

Originally Posted by lekowicz

I'm brand new to OF, so this is my first post. I have had horrible luck with iPhone syncing the last few days as well. The sync never finishes, regardless of connection type. The Synchronization area in Settings says only "sync currently in progress" and I don't ever see the progress bar any more. I have tried the Reset Database option on the iPhone, and have also reinstalled the app itself. OF on the Mac seems to be working just fine (v77.9.0.103638), as far as I can tell, since my two Mac copies are staying in sync, but this problem seems to have happened directly after one of the Sneaky Peek updates, not the iPhone 1.0.2 update. Maybe. Who can tell for sure? Sigh!

Relevant or irrelevant info: OF database sync file size is only 3.2MB. I have a fairly small collection of projects so far, so I know this is not a database size issue. I don't need to move old data to archive yet.

Just wanted to share that I'm having this issue too.

[MacBerry]

My OmniFocus.ofocus file is at 2.2mb and contains 499 items. I delete all completed actions and projects religiously, and have 39 projects, each with about 4 actions on average, not one of them older than 10 days.

It is incredibly slow to sync on the iPhone even over wi-fi. Takes just a few seconds on the desktop.

It would be incredibly useful if Omni could let us know if the sync continues in the background if we quit OF? I believe quitting doesn't actually quit (holding the home button down does that), but am not sure. Now we have manual syncing it helps, but not if we have to sit and wait for a sync to finish before we can do anything else.

Mark