[villageboy]

In planning mode, if I have a few items within a project, and the project is in Parallel Mode, the items show as "remaining" but NOT as "available" if they have not been assigned a context. So this means that any action without a context assigned shows up in gray. This sounds like incorrect behavior to me, because I thought something should be gray and unavailable only when the project it belongs in is a sequential project.

[Toadling]

No, I think the behavior is working as intended. Actions without a context are considered unavailable, regardless of whether they appear in a Project, Single-Action List, or in a Sequential or Parallel grouping. In other words, OmniFocus considers those actions as still being planned, they have not been fully processed and are not ready to be acted upon.

[villageboy]

Okay - that response makes sense. Although if that is indeed the case, then I would recommend the Omni folks to make a slight change to the software as follows:

If I go to my preferences and say that clean up should process inbox items that have been assigned **just** a project, then that preference should also trigger OF to know that actions without a context should be available too. Right now, my clean up process is cleaning up actions without a context but it is not making them available, which makes things slightly confusing.

If, as Toadling wrote, a context is necessary before an item can be available, then it defeats the purpose of having the clean up preference at all...

[Toadling]

Yeah, that's a valid point, I guess. I have mine set to only process those actions with a Context, so I haven't run into this "Clean up of unavailable actions" thing.

[brianogilvie]

Originally Posted by villageboy

f I go to my preferences and say that clean up should process inbox items that have been assigned **just** a project, then that preference should also trigger OF to know that actions without a context should be available too. Right now, my clean up process is cleaning up actions without a context but it is not making them available, which makes things slightly confusing.

If, as Toadling wrote, a context is necessary before an item can be available, then it defeats the purpose of having the clean up preference at all...

Not necessarily. This came up once or twice in discussions over the summer. Some people want an action to be cleaned up out of their Inbox even if it is unavailable, because for them, the important step is figuring out what project to put it in. Those people intend to assign a context when they review that project.

The way that OmniFocus is built, every action needs a context to be available. You can quickly see which actions do not have contexts by looking at the No Context list in Context mode, and assign contexts there.

[villageboy]

Got it - thanks for clarifying.