[Rockyroad]

A friend who is getting Omnifocus wants to start by setting it up similar to me. Is there a way to give him the following without copying the actual tasks:

1. Preferences
2. Fonts and styles
3. Perspectives, with icons and keyboard shortcuts
4. Custom toolbar

Or alternatively, maybe I could clone the whole thing and then delete every task and project?

[Brian]

If you open up the style preferences and select the small gear button on the lower left, you should be able to use "Save Theme" to send him your style preferences.

Actually, if you want to send him all your preferences, you can just open up
<your home folder>/Library/Preferences/
and attach the "com.omnigroup.OmniFocus.plist" file to an email.

Next, zip up
<your home folder>/Library/Application Support/Perspectives/
and send that, as well.

I'm pretty sure those include all the relevant bits, but if I've forgotten something, let me know and I can tell you where it's located. :-)

[whpalmer4]

Brian, perspectives are stored in the database now, not in that folder. Makes this task a bit more difficult...but then I also think there's value in going through the motions of configuring these things even if you're just clicking the widgets that someone else tells you to click, especially if you get an explanation of why you click them at the same time. My ideal approach to helping someone else copy my setup would be to generate a theme file, as you suggested, and then just do a screen sharing session with them and talk them through configuring the options and perspectives. This is assuming a beginning user -- a more advanced one I'd probably just give a screen shot of the perspectives window for each perspective and a copy of the theme.

[Brian]

Oh lord, you're right - I totally forgot we moved perspectives into the database. <shakes head>

[Rockyroad]

So there's no way to export Preferences from Omnifocus now?

What about duplicating the database, booting omnifocus from the new database and then resetting it? Would that wipe the data but keep all the Perspectives and Prefs?

[Brian]

Preferences are stored outside OmniFocus, so you can attach them to an email just fine. You want the file named "com.omnigroup.OmniFocus.plist" which is stored in
<your home folder>/Library/Preferences

As far as sending the rest of the information, I'd suggest the following.

Quit OmniFocus.
open up the Application Support folder (also in that Library folder mentioned above).

Duplicate the "OmniFocus" folder, drag the duplicate to the desktop, then open a finder window on that folder.

Launch OmniFocus and close all open windows.
Double-click the "OmniFocus.ofocus" file in the duplicated folder.
Bring up the All Items perspective, then delete anything you don't want to send along.

Quit OmniFocus and send the duplicated/modified OmniFocus database to your friend.

Does that help?

[Rockyroad]

Yes thanks.

So if I double click a 2nd .ofocus data file, Omnifocus will save changes to that and not touch my original?

When I reboot OmniFocus, will it default back to looking for my data file in Application Support?