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Originally Posted by marygarden
Could someone please give me some advice on the Inspector panel.
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Sure! Here are a few quick clarifications:
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For example if I have a project/task scheduled for a certain date, eg. Get bread, and I check the inspector to Review this every day, do I also check the Repeat every day? Or should I only check either Review or Repeat. What is the difference between Review and Repeat? (Is repeat in fact a repetitive task or action?)
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Review and repeat are totally distinct.
Review dates and intervals apply only to projects. They specify when, and how often, you intend to look over your progress on the project and assess what you still need to do on it, how important it is vis-a-vis your other projects, and so on. In Project view, you can aid this review process by grouping your projects by the review date.
The review date will only update when you use the Edit > Mark Reviewed command. The new review date will be the date you mark a project reviewed plus whatever the interval is. (If I have a project set to have a 1-week review interval, and I mark it reviewed today, the next review will be Sat. 9/1/07.) It will not update automatically, because you might want to be reminded that you're overdue with your review. The Start and Due dates have nothing to do with reviews.
To take your example: unless Get Bread is a project with a series of actions, you should not be able to give it its own review date or interval. It might be part of a project called "keep pantry stocked," which you might want to review from time to time.
Repeat indicates whether an action needs to be done more than once. If Get Bread is a regular, recurring action for you, you might decide to make it a repeating action. If so, you have two choices. Do you always want to get bread on a fixed schedule (say, every Monday)? Then you would make the due date next Monday and set the action to repeat every 1 week from assigned date. Do you want to get bread a fixed period from the last day you got bread, even if it was on Thursday or Friday? Then you would set the action to repeat every 1 week from completion date.
Another example might make the difference clearer. I have to put out my trash by 7 am Thursday morning, so if I created a repeating action for that, I would make it start at 8 pm Wednesday and due 7 am Thursday, and set it to repeat 1 week from assigned date. That's because the trash always has to be there on Thursday. On the other hand, I return bottles with deposits about every two weeks or so. If I go three and a half weeks without returning them, there's no point in returning them half a week later. So in that case I would set the task to repeat every 2 weeks from completion date, rather than assigned date.
When you mark a repeating action completed, an uncompleted duplicate, with updated start and due dates, will be created. You can also set entire projects to repeat.
[QUOTE]Is the date supposed to automatically update, or do I still see it on the given Start date?[QUOTE]
The date will only update after you mark the repeating action (or project) complete, by checking it off or, in the case of a project, using the contextual menu to mark it complete. After all, if you intend to get bread on Monday and you don't, you want OmniFocus to indicate on Tuesday that you are overdue on it.
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Why is the Context box at the bottom of the inspector always(it seems) greyed out?
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It is grayed out unless you select a context from the sidebar in context view. Then you can make a context inactive (if, say, you have a context for your summer home and you won't be there for months) or set it not to allow next actions.
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