[matthew.e]

Great! i removed all synced devices, etc, and started from scratch, and now have 1 zip file, and its about 10x faster!

Thanks.

[chriswitt]

Personally, I hope this can be automated in the Preferences in an upcoming release; I don't like having to "manage" my database.

Just sayin! It would be a nice knowing that it's archiving every week (or whatever I set it at).

[intranation]

I have a monthly recurring task to do it as part of my monthly top-level review. It's not so bad, plus I can imagine some people like to be able to search back through old tasks (I don't - once they're done they're off my plate!).

Hello,
I'm pretty new to OmniFocus, and now that I've gotten it down a little, I'm liking it a lot and finding it very helpful.
My iPhone tells me that I somehow have 987 zip files, though I just verified that my computer and phone are the only clients and that both have been synced very recently. They have also been frequently synced prior to that. I have very little to archive as I've just gotten started with OF. Any advice would be very much appreciated. I also want to mention that I've been extremely impressed with the forums, both in terms of contributions from users and people at Omni. One really gets the sense we are in good hands!

Added subsequently:The problem seems to have been solved! I had not yet purchased a license -- was still on the free trial -- and I guess that was preventing it from getting rid of all those zips.

[Brian]

I'd be really interested in figuring out what caused the database to compact - maybe your trial license expired on the desktop? While it's running in trial mode, OmniFocus behaves exactly like it does with a purchased license. I guess if the trial had expired, you'd be prevented from doing any more syncs...

<brian wanders off, vaguely confused and muttering to himself, in search of caffeine.>

[figman]

Originally Posted by Brian

I'd be really interested in figuring out what caused the database to compact - maybe your trial license expired on the desktop? While it's running in trial mode, OmniFocus behaves exactly like it does with a purchased license. I guess if the trial had expired, you'd be prevented from doing any more syncs...

<brian wanders off, vaguely confused and muttering to himself, in search of caffeine.>

Figman wanders in laughing and thinking to himself "if only Omni's Ninja's could be cloned and shipped off to his other software vendors...Then he could have quality software with reliability and an actual responsiveness from their tech support...if only...if only"...and then he hands Brian a Venti coffee.

[jgastin]

There's something funny going on with my OF database. I sync OF between three Macs and an iPhone using mobileme. Sync works, but is slow on the iPhone. iPhone reports 167 zip files (!).

I turned off sync with all Macs, reset database on iPhone. I rebuilt the database on one Mac, and then turned syncing back on. I enabled sync on the phone. I did several syncs on the one mac and the phone without changing the contents of the database, but the number of zip files would only stay the same.

I had hoped this would let the number of zip files go down to something small, since the one computer and the phone would be perfectly in sync, with no other devices lagging. This didn't happen.

What am I missing?

Using OF 1.6 (not the sneakypeaks) and iPhone OF 1.2.2, so I think I'm using the latest release versions.

[jgastin]

Originally Posted by jgastin

There's something funny going on with my OF database. I sync OF between three Macs and an iPhone using mobileme. Sync works, but is slow on the iPhone. iPhone reports 167 zip files (!).

I turned off sync with all Macs, reset database on iPhone. I rebuilt the database on one Mac, and then turned syncing back on. I enabled sync on the phone. I did several syncs on the one mac and the phone without changing the contents of the database, but the number of zip files would only stay the same.

I had hoped this would let the number of zip files go down to something small, since the one computer and the phone would be perfectly in sync, with no other devices lagging. This didn't happen.

What am I missing?

Using OF 1.6 (not the sneakypeaks) and iPhone OF 1.2.2, so I think I'm using the latest release versions.

Arghh. My last sync just sent the number of zips to 219.

[Brian]

I assume you've already done this, but open up Sync preferences on one of your macs and check the "Show Sync Clients" button. Are there duplicate entries or stale entries in the list? If so, you want to remove dupes and/or have the other machines sync to catch up.

If all dupes are removed and your devices are all caught up, you should see your database shrink after the first sync that's an hour later. (There are technical reasons that I can never remember when I'm writing one of these posts why we need to leave the files there for an hour.)

Turning sync off on a device doesn't do anything on the sync server. We leave all the files in place. You want to open up the Sync prefs and unregister it instead.

You may want to contact the support ninjas and let them lend a hand.

[shhQuiet]

Originally Posted by Brian

We don't actually remove transactions from the server until all the machines know about them, so if one of the machines has not synced in a while, the transactions build up until they do.

This is a Very Good Thing to know-- I had my iPhone replaced under warranty after having using OFiP... OF kept warning me that I hadn't synced my iPhone in a long time, but I ignored it as a glitch, since I was syncing all the time...

Well, finally I figured out that OF keeps track of iPhone clients by serial number, or something... When I looked at the registered clients, there were TWO iPhones listed... I deleted the old unsynced iPhone and all is good again.

Just an FYI in case someone replaces their iPhone and forgets to unregister the old one in OF-- your database will not be compacted until you do!