I have been storing reference material in OmniFocus, often attached to projects, for years now, and it is working very well for me. The reference material I store OmniFocus only consists of text, but I have an increasing number of PDF and images (e.g. screenshots) to deals with. I can imagine multiple ways of dealing with those binary files:
1. Storing them in Dropbox or Google Docs, and include a link to the file from OmniFocus. This is what I have been doing for the past year or so.
Upsides: it keeps the OmniFocus database small; Dropbox or Google Docs are systems I trust not to loose my data.
Downsides: this separate uploading/linking takes time, especially when you have quite a few of those files (say PDF of receipts for an expense report); also the file can't be seen right there, from OmniFocus, which is more of an annoyance when using OmniFocus on an iPhone/iPad.
2. Storing them as attachments in OmniFocus.
Upsides: it's fast, both to add an attachment (copy a PDF in the Finder, paste it in a note) and it's easy to look at it (just open the note), including on an iPhone/iPad; everything is one place, reducing the number of systems used.
Downsides: I'm not sure if I can trust OmniFocus not to loose attachment, or to continue to work reliably with lots of attachments.
Did anyone experiment with #2 for a significant period of time? Are there any other approaches to deal with PDF reference material, assuming you already store textual reference material in OmniFocus? Other comments?
(For those wondering, for my reference material in OmniFocus, I am using an artificial context called "Reference", marked as "On hold". Again this is working really, really well for me, even of OmniFocus isn't designed for this. This being said, I don't necessarily advocate this technique; the right "reference material" solution for you might be Evernote, or something else.)
Alex
1. Storing them in Dropbox or Google Docs, and include a link to the file from OmniFocus. This is what I have been doing for the past year or so.
Upsides: it keeps the OmniFocus database small; Dropbox or Google Docs are systems I trust not to loose my data.
Downsides: this separate uploading/linking takes time, especially when you have quite a few of those files (say PDF of receipts for an expense report); also the file can't be seen right there, from OmniFocus, which is more of an annoyance when using OmniFocus on an iPhone/iPad.
2. Storing them as attachments in OmniFocus.
Upsides: it's fast, both to add an attachment (copy a PDF in the Finder, paste it in a note) and it's easy to look at it (just open the note), including on an iPhone/iPad; everything is one place, reducing the number of systems used.
Downsides: I'm not sure if I can trust OmniFocus not to loose attachment, or to continue to work reliably with lots of attachments.
Did anyone experiment with #2 for a significant period of time? Are there any other approaches to deal with PDF reference material, assuming you already store textual reference material in OmniFocus? Other comments?
(For those wondering, for my reference material in OmniFocus, I am using an artificial context called "Reference", marked as "On hold". Again this is working really, really well for me, even of OmniFocus isn't designed for this. This being said, I don't necessarily advocate this technique; the right "reference material" solution for you might be Evernote, or something else.)
Alex
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