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Are archives worth saving for years on end? (How to view them yearly?) Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
At the beginning of 2010 I feel I made a huge mistake by deleting the omnifocus archives from my omnifocus folder on my Mac. I deleted them at the time cause for the year 2009 I had about 3gbs worth of archive files and figured I should delete them.

Halfway through 2010 now in feel it might be best to keep them for the long run. After all, I'd love to look back at any given project at any given time. Especially when it comes time for the end of the year review when I can go back and look at all the things I accomplished, things I put on hold and what I simply dropped...I feel this gives great perspective and reassurance as to my projects and overall outlook on the coming year.

So my 2 questions here today are:

Do you save your OF archives?

&

How can I go back to see any archive I may want to check out for a minute or two, just to see what was up a year ago from today?
 
Do you perhaps mean the backup files? You would be the most productive person in the world if you managed to generate an archive of completed tasks that occupied a handful of GB!

If there is a good reason for you to keep the old daily backups, you probably already know about it and don't need our advice. For most people, being able to look back in the Archive file and see the completed projects and actions is probably sufficient, and the ability to see the entire database as it appeared on some arbitrary date is overkill. If you are using Time Machine/Time Capsule for your backups, you could pull old copies subject to it's thinning policy, too.

To look at one of the backup files, just double-click it in the Finder and OF will open it. It will look very much like a regular OF window, and you can copy/paste or drag/drop items back to the active database if something needs resurrection.
 
My thought is... keep the archives forever. You'll probably have space on your computer so why not.

(I'm assuming you are speaking of the File->Archive function and not the backups that happen automatically)

To view at anytime, go to File->Open Archive.
To view items that you've completed, select the view filter and change the groupings to completed.

Or use the completed perspective that comes with OmniFocus. It may be in the customize toolbar section.

If you are speaking of the automatic backups, I would think a month is probably good enough.
 
Whoa whoa

So the Archives I "move old data to archive" are different from the OF backups?

In my documents under my OF backups folder are over 1gb worth of backups from January 1st of this year. Am I hearing that these aren't that important and the files I may want to refer back to from years prior are all already in my OF as an archive, without fear of my having deleted them?

I'm kinda confused now..
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by HappyDude View Post
So the Archives I "move old data to archive" are different from the OF backups?
Yes, they are different. The backup documents in your OF Backups folder contain backups of the entire database at the time the backup was made. The archive file 'Archive.ofocus-archive' is in your OmniFocus application support folder, and contains the old data that is purged from the database based on the date settings you specify when you run the archive command.

The primary functions that I see of the archive function is to streamline the database to keep the app responsive, speed sync times, less space needed on a mobile device, etc. Running the archive command adds the data to the existing archive file, rather than creating a new document as is the case with the backup documents.

On the subject of backup documents, I don't see any need to have backups from the first of the year-may not need to have any if you use Time Machine. This has been an often requested feature to limit the number of backups that OmniFocus keeps, say to the most recent 10 backups.
 
 


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