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OmniFocus 1.5 manual

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1. Outlining menu or press Command To create a group from some existing actions e Select all of the actions you want to group e Choose Group from the Edit Outlining menu or press Command Option L Making a project sequential or parallel Also you can indent some actions to make them children of the action immediately before them in the outline e Select the actions you want to indent making sure that there s an action before them in the outline e Choose Indent from the Edit Outlining menu or press Command or click one of the items handles and drag to the right If you mark an action group complete all of its child actions are also marked as complete You can even nest groups within other groups but that can get pretty ridiculous pretty quickly If you have more than two levels of hierarchy in one project you might want to consider splitting things up into separate projects Organizing projects into folders Folders are a convenient way of organizing your projects the same way you use folders to organize files on your Mac For example you could keep folders for each area of your life perhaps Home Work Health Education Recreation and Papier Mach Pterodactyls That way when you re concentrating on one area you can keep just that folder expanded in the sidebar or use the Focus feature to hide the others completely To create a folder e Make sure you are in planning
2. 32 34 35 36 38 38 40 40 41 41 42 44 46 48 51 Viewing actions by context Using on hold or waiting contexts Dropping contexts Adding stuff to the inbox Using the Quick Entry window Processing inbox items Clipping material from other applications Processing Mail messages into actions Cleaning Up Focusing on certain projects or folders Using the view bar to filter and arrange items Searching for actions or projects Using perspectives to store your OmniFocus window settings Reviewing projects Marking a project complete Putting a project on hold Dropping a project Page setup and Printing Synchronizing between Macs and mobile devices Synchronizing with iCal Importing data from other applications Exporting your database to different formats CHAPTER 3 53 53 55 57 58 59 60 62 REFERENCE Using the inspectors Style preferences Customizing columns General preferences AppleScript support Licensing Software Update preference WELCOME TO OmNILFOCUS What OmniFocus Is OmniFocus is a place for you to keep all of the stuff you re meaning to do whether it s the stack of paperwork sitting on your desk that s due now now now or the marble monolith in your garage you ve been meaning to sculpt one of these years Of course you could just make a big list on paper or in an ordinary text editing application But OmniFocus is carefully crafted to understand task lists it can show you just wh
3. Status Completed or just press the Space bar The project s status changes to Completed and it is filed away in your library for safekeeping Reviewing projects Putting a project on hold If you re not quite sure whether you want to start or continue a project you can put it on ice for a while It disappears from your Active list in the sidebar and its actions likewise stay hidden Every now and then you can set the project filter in the view bar to show On Hold projects or All Projects and review which ones you d like to make active which ones you d like to drop and which ones you d like to keep on hold There are several ways to put a project on hold e Select the project in the main outline then use the Status control in the inspector to choose On Hold e Select the project in the sidebar then choose On Hold from the gear menu at the bottom of the sidebar e Right click or Control click the project in the main outline or in the sidebar then choose On Hold from the contextual menu To make an on hold project active again e Choose On Hold from the view bar s project filter pop up menu e Find the project then use one of the same techniques as above to set the project s status back to Active Dropping a project If you ve decided not to work on a project any further you can drop it completely It disappears from your Active list in the sidebar and its actions likewise st
4. choose Synchronize with iCal to bring iCal and Omni Focus back in sync New OmniFocus actions in synchronized contexts are copied to the associated calendars in iCal New iCal to dos in synchronized calendars are copied to the OmniFocus inbox Changes to actions on either side are applied to the corresponding items on the other side Synchronizing with iCal In the Sync preferences you can change how the synchronization process works e Add blocked actions to calendars if this is selected even actions that aren t available because another action needs to be completed first for instance are copied to iCal e Add completed actions to calendars if this is selected even actions that you have already marked complete are copied to iCal e If actions are deleted from calendars delete them from OmniFocus If you want to delete actions in iCal and have them be deleted from OmniFocus too select this checkbox Otherwise you can be sure that synchronizing will never delete any of your actions in OmniFocus e Include each action s context in its calendar item title This prepends your action titles with the assigned context name like Office alphabetize paperweights Synchronizing with iCal 49 5O Importing data from other applications If you have some data in an OmniOutliner document especially a Kinkless GTD document you can import it into your OmniFocus database To import an OmniOutli
5. are due e The Show Due Soon and Overdue actions setting determines whether you should see colored counters next to items in the sidebar a colored counter in the menu bar or a colored badge on the OmniFocus Dock icon If you choose to show an indicator in the menu bar you can click it to see how many due soon or overdue items you have in your inbox and your individual contexts choose an item from this menu to open an OmniFocus window on it e You can set the review interval for new projects by default each project is to be reviewed every week e Below that you can choose which day is considered the start of the week for the purposes of entering dates like next week If you choose Default the week starts on whichever day is normal for the region chosen in the Interna tional System Preferences pane e The Default Time for Due Dates setting controls the time of day assigned to due dates that you enter without specifying a time as described in the Setting start dates and due dates section of the help The setting in the Projects amp Action Groups section determines whether newly cre ated projects and groups should be parallel or sequential AppleScript support OmniFocus has quite comprehensive AppleScript support So if there s something you wish it did you may be able to make it Open OmniFocus s AppleScript dic tionary in the Script Editor application for the relevant documentation AppleScript support
6. awake and connected to the network are notified right away Even if you don t change anything OmniFocus syncs once an hour You can also manually sync by choosing Synchronize with Server from the File menu or by click ing the Sync toolbar button As long as OmniFocus synchronization is enabled on all of your computers and handheld devices and they can all reach the database on the server they will all be up to date with one another Synchronizing between Macs and mobile devices 47 48 Synchronizing with iCal An excellent way to liberate your data from OmniFocus and communicate with lots of other applications and devices is to synchronize with iCal Once your data is in iCal you can share it in the iCalendar format understood by scads of calendar and to do applications To synchronize OmniFocus with iCal e Choose OmniFocus gt Preferences then click the iCal icon e Select the Unsynchronized group in the Calendar list all of the contexts you re not synchronizing appear in the Contexts list e Drag context names into the calendar name you d like to synchronize them with For instance if you drag your errands context to your Home calendar any actions assigned to your errands context will get corresponding to do items in your Home calendar in iCal e From the File menu choose Synchronize with iCal For each context that you dragged into a calendar its actions are synchronized to iCal e Whenever you like
7. can set up a repeat interval The Next Start and Next Due dates show how the next repetition of the item would be scheduled if you completed this one right now e Next Review This indicates when the selected project is due to be reviewed You can let OmniFocus determine this based on the review interval see Review Every below and the last time you marked it as reviewed or you can enter your own date e Review Every The default interval between reviews is set in the Data Preferences but you can change the interval on a per project basis if there are projects you want to keep a closer eye on or leave alone longer e Last Reviewed This is the last time you marked the project as reviewed or the date it was created if you have never reviewed it Using the inspectors Style preferences In order to avoid too much fiddling around OmniFocus doesn t support styling individual items Instead you can style all items of a particular type To get to the Style preferences just choose Preferences from the OmniFocus menu then click the Style icon As you adjust the styles keep in mind that you can always click the Reset button at the bottom of the pane to return to the default settings At the top of the pane is a pair of buttons for changing all of your font sizes at once this is a shortcut if you just want bigger or smaller text in general Each press increases or decreases all font sizes by 1 point You can also select p
8. just the ones that are actually available to you wherever you are now To create a new context e Make sure you are in context mode an easy way to get there is by clicking the Contexts button in the toolbar ita e Click the plus button at the bottom of the sidebar e Type a title for your new context To assign a context to an action in planning mode e Click in the Context column for the action e Type part of the name of the context you want to assign OmniFocus tries to match what you typed with the names of your existing contexts e If you see the context you want select it Otherwise you can finish typing the context name and then press Command Return to create it as a new context To assign a context in context mode just drag an action into the context s entry in the sidebar Keeping track of single actions Organizing contexts hierarchically You can nest a context inside another context creating a hierarchy as deep as you like Just drag any context in the sidebar inside of any other context When you select a parent context you can see all of the actions inside that context or inside any of its descendants This way you can look at your actions assigned to a more general context like Office or a more specific one like Office Mac You can also keep identically named contexts inside of different parent contexts like Office Mac and Home Mac Viewing actions by context When y
9. menu e See if the paper you want to use is listed in the Paper Size pop up menu If it is choose it and print normally If it isn t choose Manage Custom Sizes to create it If you change the Page Setup for a window with a perspective open you can tell because the perspective s name appears in the window s title bar those settings are saved with the perspective This means you can print your errands perspective on index cards in black and white at 120 scale and with no extra columns print your weekly review perspective in full color on landscape orientation letter paper and so on The Perspectives window has a special Quick Print button _ amp at the bottom Just select a perspective and click it to bring up the Print panel for that perspective then you re just a click away from your printed perspective If you trust that the settings are right and you don t even want to see the Print panel Command click the button to print right away Page setup and Printing 43 44 Synchronizing between Macs and mobile devices OmniFocus version 1 5 introduces the ability to synchronize your database with a server or a disk so that all of your Macs and your iPhone or iPod touch will stay up to date To get to the Sync preferences just choose Preferences from the OmniFocus menu then click the Sync button By default OmniFocus is set to sync with Nothing in this case the database in your Library folder is the onl
10. mode an easy way to get there is by clicking the Projects button in the toolbar Sj e In the sidebar select the item just above where you want the new folder to appear e Click the Add Folder button below the sidebar e Name your new folder To put something a project or another folder inside your folder just drag its icon onto the folder in the sidebar You may have as many layers of folders as you can stand Organizing projects into folders 21 22 Setting start dates and due dates Actions and projects can have start dates and due dates A start date determines when an action or project becomes available while a due date determines when something is considered overdue You can also use the Dates amp Times section of the Data preferences to set how long before its due date an item should be consid ered due soon Also in the Dates amp Times section of the Data preferences you can choose which time of day to use for when you enter a due date with no time By default it is 12 00 AM the very beginning of the day you could for instance enter 11 59 PM to make new items due at the very end of the day or 5 00 PMto make new items due at the end of the workday Start and due dates can be entered either in the main outline if you have the date columns turned on in the View menu or in the inspector To group and sort by start or due dates use the grouping and sorting menus in the view bar You can be pr
11. them from falling through the cracks Each project has an interval for how often you intend to review it and a date when the next review is planned You can change the default review interval in the Data preferences and you can change the review interval and next review date of indi vidual projects with the inspector To review your remaining projects e From the Perspectives menu choose Review there s also a corresponding button you can add to your toolbar if you like In this view your remaining projects are grouped in order of when they re due to be reviewed e For each project in the Review Today group or earlier groups check whether the project is in the state it needs to be in Should you revise its ac tions or add new ones Should you put it on hold drop it or complete it Or is it just fine e Once you re satisfied with the state of the project select it and click the Mark Reviewed toolbar button or choose Mark Reviewed from the Edit menu The project s next review date moves forward and you can go on to review another project Marking a project complete Eventually oh frabjous day you re going to reach the successful end of a project When you re sure that you ve really accomplished Move in to new house Carve Halloween pumpkins or Write pterodactyl novel you can mark the project complete Select the project and then either click the Complete toolbar item choose Edit
12. 59 60 Licensing Select the Licenses menu item from the OmniFocus menu to see the Licenses dialog From here you can review and edit your OmniFocus licenses which verify that you ve actually paid for the software Thanks To buy a license e Click the Buy Licenses button and you will find yourself magically transport ed to the Omni Group s store on the web Naturally this only works if you have a live Internet connection e If you re considering buying a Family Pack license note that a Family Pack licenses up to five members of a private household If you re buying for a company or some other organization that s not a private household you can t use a Family Pack Also if you re just planning on using OmniFocus on a couple of different machines by yourself and you don t intend to have more than one copy running at a time you can just buy a single license To add a new license e Click the Add License button e If you have a license key in an e mail message copy and paste both the Owner name and the License Key into the appropriate fields If you can t copy and paste the information you ll have to type it in make sure you copy everything exactly as it appears in your license message Also double check that the license you re entering really is a license for OmniFocus licenses for other Omni Group products won t work e Use the drop down menu to select the type of license you would li
13. Mac at the time summons up a little window where you can send things to OmniFocus To collect stuff in the quick entry window e Press the quick entry keyboard shortcut as you have set it in the preferences By default it s Control Option Space The quick entry window appears e Type in the quick entry window as if you were typing in the OmniFocus in box Create as many items as you want with as much hierarchy as you want you ll need to press Control Return to create more than one item as Return dismisses the window you can change this in the General preferences You can assign projects contexts dates notes and so on for each item click the button with the gear icon to choose which columns are visible e When you re done click the Save button or press Command S The items are whisked off to your database and you can keep on doing whatever you were doing If you don t want to put the items in your database yet press the quick entry shortcut again the items will still be there the next time you open the quick entry window If you want to get rid of the items entirely click the Cancel button or press Command Period Using the Quick Entry window 29 30 Processing inbox items Items you put in the inbox stay there until you assign them a project or context by using the inspector or by typing in the Project and Context columns If you assign both a project and a context then the item is filed away wh
14. Perspectives menu choose Review there s also a corresponding button you can add to your toolbar if you like In this view your remaining projects are grouped in order of when they re due to be reviewed Look at each project and decide whether it s in the state it needs to be in Are there new actions you need to add to it Is it something you still plan on doing for sure or should you change its status to On Hold Is it something you should give up on and change its status to Dropped If it s already on hold should you set it back to Active status Once you re satisfied with the state of the project you re reviewing choose Mark Reviewed from the Edit menu or use the corresponding toolbar button and move on to the next one Remaining Next Review Inbox Name __ Library v Review today Learn Calligraphy Build Papier Mach Write Quetzalcoatlus O try instructional disc in Windows Revise Resume Reread Allen s Book v Learn Calligraphy v R Build Papier Mach Pterodacty O research pterodactyls on Wikip v Write Quetzalcoatlus Essay O sketch size comparison diagran e O outline main points This regular evaluation of each project can be a huge help when you re planning well you work well Tutorial 7 Review projects 15 USING OMNIFOCUS How projects actions contexts work together Actions O read pamphlet from Mom In OmniFo
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16. THE OMNI GROUP OMNIFOCUS MANUAL Copyright 2000 2008 The Omni Group All rights reserved OmniFocus the OmniFocus icon logo OmniPlan OmniOutliner and the Omni logo are trademarks of The Omni Group Apple the Apple logo Mac Macintosh and the Mac logo are trademarks of Apple Computer Inc registered in the U S A and other countries Other names and marks mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 7 WELCOME TO OMNIFocus 7 What OmniFocus Is 7 Quick start video 8 Tutorial 1 Create projects 9 Tutorial 2 Add actions 10 Tutorial 3 Create and assign contexts 12 Tutorial 4 Action status 13 Tutorial 5 Use the view bar 14 Tutorial 6 Drop things in the inbox 15 Tutorial 7 Review projects CHAPTER 2 17 Us NG OMNIFocus 17 How projects actions and contexts work together 18 Creating a project 18 Adding actions to a project 19 Attaching files and notes to actions and projects 19 Keeping track of the next action in each project 20 Making a project sequential or parallel 20 Using action groups 21 Organizing projects into folders 22 Setting start dates and due dates 23 Setting up repeating actions and projects 24 Estimating action duration 24 Marking actions complete 25 Flagging project and actions 25 Keeping track of single actions 26 Assigning contexts to actions 27 Organizing contexts hierarchically CHAPTER 2 CONTINUED 27 28 28 28 28 30 31
17. To create a project click the plus button at the bottom of the blue sidebar and type a name Each project you create in the sidebar also appears in the main outline Make a few different projects to begin with S Leam Calligraphy 8 Tutorial 1 Create projects Tutorial 2 Add actions Select a project in the main outline and then press Return to add an action to it Try to be as specific as you can with your action titles you should be able to know immediately upon looking at an action exactly what needs to be done Keep pressing Return and typing names to add as many actions as you want You don t need to include every action between now and the completion of the project you can always add new actions later v Make Carrot Cake O buy carrots eggs amp vanilla extract No d O ask Ned about the exact measurements of his recipe No C O bake cake No C v Photograph Model Ships O call Catelyn to ask about rigging No C O setup backdrop amp lights No C O take photos No C O return ships to Catelyn No C v Learn Calligraphy O look up teachers we met at the culture festival No A Tutorial 2 Add actions 9 10 Tutorial 3 Create and assign contexts Contexts are central to the way OmniFocus helps you find out what to do next they represent the place the tools or the person you need in order to get something done The contexts included in OmniFocus should give you a
18. abase it can start to get overwhelming The view bar can help you whittle down all that data into something meaningful and manageable For instance say you re ready to get some work done Staying in planning mode s SAY Y y tog ying n p 8 with all of your projects and actions all over the place won t do Try this e Switch to context mode where actions roam free of their project headings e Click an empty area in the sidebar to deselect all contexts all of your actions become visible in the main outline e Show the view bar by clicking the glasses button in the toolbar a row of pop up menus appears e From the action status menu with the checkbox icon choose Next Action Everything but your next actions disappears from the view e As you mark things complete the view updates to keep giving you stuff to work on v lal Errands v a Home g bake cake O read pamphlet from Mom v la Mac Online M lsekupteachers we metatthe culturefestival This is just one way the view bar can show you exactly what you re looking for For more about how to use it see the view bar section on page 36 If you ever get the view bar into a wacky state that doesn t show what you want you can always choose Revert to Default View from the Perspectives menu Tutorial 5 Use the view bar 13 Tutorial 6 Drop things in the inbox When some new chunk of work comes along you don t necessarily wan
19. ac Online O return ships to Catelyn Mac Boot Camp Learn Call i i arn Calligraphy p O look up teachers we met at the culture festival People Catelyn Tutorial 3 Create and assign contexts 11 Tutorial 4 Action status You might have noticed that some of your actions are colored differently from oth ers Actions are styled based on their status to give you an idea of their availability The next action in each project is colored purple This represents what you can do to make progress on the project In your sequential projects that is projects whose actions need to be completed in order only the next action is considered available The rest are colored gray to show that they are unavailable until you complete the next action If you change one of your projects to be parallel by clicking the twin arows to the right of the project s name you ll see the actions after the next action turn black These actions are all available because you don t need to do them in any particular order _ setup backdrop amp lights Office O take photos Office O return ships to Catelyn Catelyn Parallel Learn Calligraphy r look up teachers we met at the culture festival Online CO read pamphlet from Mom Home C try instructional disc in Windows Boot Camp 12 Tutorial 4 Action status Tutorial 5 Use the view bar Once you have a significant amount of information in your OmniFocus dat
20. ack up your database choose Back Up Database from the File menu You can choose where to put the backup Importing data from other applications To restore a backed up version of your database choose Revert to Database Backup from the File menu then choose a backup file to use Your entire database is replaced by the version in the file if you re not sure that the backup is what you want you can double click the backup file in Finder to open it in its own window first and make sure it s right Exporting your database to different formats Your data belongs to you if you want to send it to other applications run scripts on it publish it on the web or do other exciting stuff with it that we haven t even thought of you re more than welcome to write it out to the format of your liking and do so To export your database first adjust your view settings view bar focus sidebar selection and so on to show the data you want to export When the window con tains the data you want choose Export from the File menu then choose a format and a location The available formats are e OmniFocus Document This is an ordinary OmniFocus document just like the one that you use as your database If you open such a file in OmniFo cus it appears in its own window and you can work with it normally but application wide settings such as preferences and perspectives don t come along with it e Plain Text TaskPaper This is a plai
21. articular styles and specify a font size for each one On the left side is an outline of all item types that you can style organized by how they inherit from one another For example Next Actions are a type of Actions and Actions appear in the Main Outline Each item type uses its parent s style attributes unless you specifically change them You can change the appearance of the following types of items e Sidebars Everything that appears in the planning mode or context mode sidebars on the left side of a window e Top Level Items The Inbox Library No Context and Contexts items in the sidebar e Contexts The individual contexts listed in the sidebar The background color for this style fills the entire contexts mode sidebar e Projects The individual projects listed in the sidebar The background color for this style fills the entire planning mode sidebar e Folders Folders listed in the sidebar e Main Outline Everything that appears in the planning mode or contexts mode outline on the right side of a window e Groupings The headers that group together items when you set a grouping in the view bar larger and bold by default e Projects The items that represent projects and single action lists in planning mode bold by default Continued on the next page Style preferences 55 e Actions Ordinary available actions e Next Actions Purple by default e Single Actions Bl
22. assigns a context to be automatically assigned to any new actions added to the selected group or project This is handy if you have a project that you know is going to take place mainly in one context e Estimated Time This is the amount of time you expect the selected action or group will take to complete See estimating action duration on page 24 for more information Continued on the next page Using the inspectors 53 54 e Start and Due An action group or project s start date determines when it becomes available if you can t start working on something until later give it a start date so that it will stay out of your way in Pending status until then If your action group or project has a deadline enter a due date As the due date approaches the item appears in the due soon style and if it becomes overdue it appears in the overdue style e Completed The date that an action group or project was completed is re corded here You can edit the completion date in case you actually completed something a while back but didn t get around to telling OmniFocus about it until just now e Added and Changed OmniFocus keeps track of when each item was added to your database and when you last changed it Sometimes it s useful to check these values to see just how long you ve been meaning to do something e Repeat If you have an action a group or a project that needs to be done regularly you
23. at you need to know right now in order to make progress on your many projects It can remember which projects you are putting off for later which projects you claim are important but which you haven t touched in weeks and which proj ects may blow up if you don t do something about them right away The really really cool thing about OmniFocus is that once you get the hang of it you can really trust your system and know that nothing is slipping through the cracks The reward is certainty that you re doing exactly what you need to be doing right now or even that you don t need to be doing anything at all Quick start video We ve put together an introductory video about OmniFocus watching it is probably the best way to get acquainted with the software And then if you want to learn more this manual will still be here when you re done Three Step Process 1 Capture 2 Plan eviow captu 3 Act To watch visit the OmniFocus product page http www omnigroup com applications omnifocus What OmniFocus Is 7 Tutorial 1 Create projects OmniFocus starts out with a couple of projects already in the library In this tuto rial we ll assume that you ve looked them over and deleted them but you can leave them around if you want Think of something you re working on or that you d like to start working on that will require several steps to complete In OmniFocus that s called a project
24. ata icon The Inbox Processing section of the Data preferences controls exactly how items should be handled when you perform a Clean Up e You may want to require that an inbox item has A Project A Context Both or Either before it is automatically moved out of the inbox e If you process items with a project but no context they move into the appro priate project but also appear in the No Context group of context mode so that you can assign them a context at some point e If you process items with a context but no project they move into the Default List for Single Actions as indicated below you can choose a single action list for holding your projectless actions or let OmniFocus create a Miscella neous list when it s needed e You can also choose whether Clean Up completed Inbox items If you want OmniFocus to file away inbox items you ve marked complete regardless of whether they have a project or context turn this setting on If you still want to go back and assign projects or contexts to your completed inbox items so that they get filed away in the right place turn this off 58 General preferences In the Dates amp Times section you can control how OmniFocus handles time related stuff e The Mark actions due soon setting controls how long before an item s due date it should start appearing in the special style for almost due items By default items start turning orange 2 days before they
25. ay hid den Of course you could just delete the project but then you wouldn t have any record of it or its actions ever having existed Keeping them around in a dropped state means you can go back and check on how often you give up on projects check which actions you ve completed regardless of whether they re from still relevant projects and so on Continued on the next page Putting a project on hold 41 42 There are several ways to drop a project e Select the project in the main outline then use the Status control in the inspector to choose Dropped e Select the project in the sidebar then choose Dropped from the gear menu at the bottom of the sidebar e Right click or Control click the project in the main outline or in the sidebar then choose Dropped from the contextual menu To make a dropped project active again e Choose Dropped from the view bar s project filter pop up menu e Find the project then use one of the same techniques as above to set the project s status back to Active Page setup and Printing Printing your OmniFocus data is pretty straightforward set up a window that contains exactly the data you want by focusing selecting items in the sidebar or expanding and collapsing rows in the main outline Then choose Print from the File menu OmniFocus resizes the content to fit horizontally on the paper you ve chosen For more control over how your data is printe
26. bar in planning mode click it to choose what kind of projects to show in the sidebar You ll probably want this to be Active most of the time so you can see only the projects you re working on now You can also choose Remaining projects that haven t been completed or dropped Stalled projects without any available actions Pending projects with start dates in the future On Hold Dropped Completed projects you have marked with these statuses or All Context Filter This appears above the sidebar in context mode click it to choose what kind of contexts to show in the sidebar You can choose Remaining contexts which haven t been dropped Active contexts that have actions assigned to them Stalled con texts without any actions On Hold contexts you ve indicated should not allow their actions to become available or All Grouping Click this to choose how to group the projects in the Planning view outline or the actions in the Context view outline You can Ungroup everything or group by Fold er for the same structure as you see in the sidebar Due date Start date Completed date Next Review date Added date or Changed date Each group shows up as a collapsible bar in the main outline Remember that in Planning view the grouping applies to whole projects not to the individual actions inside them Using the view bar to filter and arrange items Sorting Click this to choose how to order the projects in t
27. brary ever happened e Select a project or folder or any combination of projects and folders in the e Click the Focus toolbar button or choose Focus on selected items from the View menu Everything outside your selection disappears from the sidebar and the title at the top of the window changes to Focusing on selected items ignores everything outside of your focus as if the items you re focusing on e When you re done focusing choose Show All Projects from the View menu or click the Show All toolbar button Your library comes back as if nothing When you find yourself using a certain set of contexts focus and view bar filters pretty often you might want to save them as a perspective see page 38 Focusing on certain projects or folders 35 36 Using the view bar to filter and arrange items The view bar is a powerful way to filter and rearrange the items in your window It has one pop up menu to control what appears in the sidebar and five pop up menus to control what appears in the main outline The various filters work together so that you can come up with quite expressive combinations of settings like Flagged next actions in active projects that I can do in less than 15 minutes sorted by due date When you find yourself using a certain set of contexts focus and view bar filters pretty often you might want to save them as a perspective see page 38 Project Filter This appears above the side
28. button If the Check for Updates checkbox is selected you will be notified when there is a new version of OmniFocus ready for you to enjoy Click the Check for Updates Now button to look for the newest version once right away You can select the Include system information checkbox to volunteer some information about your computer s configuration when you check for updates For details about what kind of information we collect and how we use it click the Learn More button on the preference pane To see the statistics we have collected from users visit update omnigroup com Licensing 61 62 Getting help The OmniFocus web site is a good place to find the latest information about OmniFocus http www omnigroup com applications omnifocus The Release notes available from the Help menu list all of the changes to OmniFocus for each version Check them out if you d like to keep up with what s new The Omni Group maintains online forums for all of our products and you re invited Come share your questions and ideas with other users and Omni staff http forums omnigroup com If you re stuck or if you just want to let us know how we re doing go ahead and send us an e mail Choose Send Feedback from the Help menu to conjure up a message addressed to us A real human reads and replies to every message we get We ll do our best to help you out omnifocus omnigroup com Software Update preferences NE THE OMNI G
29. cial to assign a context to each action A simple way to think of contexts is as the place or mode you need to be in to do a given task you can only make phone calls when you re near a phone you can only buy groceries when you re out running errands and you can only do research on the web when you re at your Mac If you think about it almost any task requires you to be in a certain context to do it You can use planning mode and context mode to look at your actions in terms of what project they belong to or what context they require How projects actions contexts work together 17 Creating a project Make a project any time you realize you have something you need to do which requires more than one step To create a project e Make sure you are in planning mode an easy way to get there is by clicking the Projects button in the toolbar y e Click the plus button at the bottom of the sidebar e Type a title for your new project Regardless of which view mode you are in you can also create a new project by clicking the Add Project button in the toolbar choosing Add Project from the File menu or typing Command Shift N OmniFocus switches to planning mode automatically Adding actions to a project Add actions to a project whenever you think of something that you need to do in order to move the project forward Most of the time you ll probably want to add actions using the inbox or the quick ent
30. cus the things you need to do are represented by actions Ideally an action is a distinct chunk of work described by a name that starts with an unam biguous verb This makes things less intimidating to start and easier to finish a list of ten actions such as Carry boxes out to recycling bin and Assemble bookshelf is much more approachable than the nebulous Finish moving in Of course you should find the level of specificity that works best for you As you create actions and move them around OmniFocus keeps track of which ones are available waiting on something else or complete Projects Learn Calligraphy Related actions are grouped into projects which represent a set of actions work ing toward a common goal Anything you want to do that requires more than one action like Finish moving in or Get novella published are good candidates for projects Projects can then in turn be organized into folders for keeping track of your broader areas of work Single Action Lists Miscellaneous Some actions like Get a haircut don t really fit into any particular project they re just individual little things you need to do You can keep this kind of action in a single action list These lists are similar to projects but they don t assume that the actions they contain have anything to do with one another Contexts Office It s handy or for some people cru
31. d choose Page Setup from the File menu then choose OmniFocus from the Settings pop up menu for OmniFocus specific settings e Completion checkboxes you can choose to print the checkbox for each action to differentiate between completed and incomplete actions or if you like to have the box to mark off with a pen e Completion style you can choose to print completed actions with their completed action style applied a strikethrough by default Page setup and Printing e Window title Add the title of the window to the top of your printed docu ment e Date and Time Add the date and time of printing to the top of your printed document e Convert to black amp white Ignore OmniFocus s color styling and draw all text in black on a white background e Rows You can collapse all to show just the top level of the hierarchy leave as displayed to use the expansion as it is in the window on your screen or expand all to expose the collapsed rows e Notes You can hide all to put away the notes regardless of their visibil ity on the screen leave as displayed to use the note visibility as it is on the screen or show all to expose the notes for everything regardless of their visibility on the screen To print on unusually sized paper e Choose Page Setup from the File menu e Make sure the Settings pop up menu says Page Attributes e Choose your printer from the Format for pop up
32. de a project to add it to that project or drop it anywhere else to turn it into a project Processing inbox items Clipping material from other applications You may come across an email message a web page a newsreader article or some other scrap of info that you d like to turn into an OmniFocus action In the olden days you might heft your mouse highlight the text copy it summon up the Omni Focus quick entry window and paste But no you re living in the future You use the OmniFocus Clippings service To clip content from another application e Highlight some text in any application that is any application that supports Mac OS X Services which should be all applications these days ahem The Omni Mouth OmniFocus HowTo Printing to 3 an X D 4 http blog omnigroup com 2007 pep a Scale of 120 to make it a bit more readable and voila I ve got literally two click printing of my on the go to do list onto index cards The killer bit being that the Perspective saves the Page Setup options A11en does adjusting the Scale help you with your data density issue I sincerely hope you ve got somebody writing a user manual The power OF is pretty freaky CRAIG E a v tochna tochna 199 ARAJ e Press the Clipping keyboard shortcut if you have set one in OmniFocus Clippings preferences or open the application menu and then the Services submenu then c
33. disks over the network like a Mac can so this sync method won t work with it Synchronizing between Macs and mobile devices Advanced WebDAV This is a type of server for sharing files on the web offered by some hosting providers Check with your hosting provider to find out whether you can set up your own WebDAV space Be aware that providers which don t fully comply with the WebDAV standard may not work properly Step 3 Choose a sync location MobileMe If your MobileMe account information is already set up in System Preferences then your Location field is already filled in You can add a folder name to the end of the URL if you want to keep your database somewhere other than the top level of your iDisk Bonjour Click Keep the sync database on this Mac then enter a password to pro tect your database OmniFocus then makes a sync copy of your database available to other Macs and devices on your network Disk When you choose to synchronize to a disk a sheet appears for you to choose a location Make sure the disk is mounted browse to the location on the disk you want to use and then click the Set Sync Location button Advanced WebDAV Enter your WebDAV address such as https www example com webdav in the Location field If your provider supports it you can use https for a semblance of security while transmitting your data otherwise ordinary http also works Synchronizing between Macs and mobil
34. e devices 45 46 Step 4 Sync j Click the Sync Now button to start your first sync Since you don t have a sync database yet this first sync will consist of creating one and copying all of your OmniFocus data into it Step 5 Set up other Macs and devices a Qe ie X EC Once you ve fully synchronized your database to the server for the first time you re ready to tell your other Macs and portable devices about it Setting up another Mac Follow steps 1 2 and 3 again on that Mac using the same settings If you are using Bonjour click Connect to an existing sync database and select the Mac that you set up before When you synchronize that Mac it will find the existing database on the server Synchronizing between Macs and mobile devices Setting up an iPhone or iPod touch OmniFocus is available for the iPhone and iPod touch from the App Store If your device is on the same wireless network as your Mac you can open OmniFocus on that device and choose to get the sync settings from your Mac by name Otherwise click the Send Settings button on your Mac s OmniFocus Sync preferences pane to email a special link to yourself Open the email on your mobile device and tap the link OmniFocus does the rest Step 6 Stay in sync One minute after you make any change OmniFocus automatically synchronizes with the server With Bonjour sync whenever you make a change on one client any other clients that are
35. e right place in your OmniFocus structure just put it in the inbox Later on when you process the inbox you can decide whether each item is a new project or an action in an existing project what its context is and so on To create a new inbox item just select the inbox in the sidebar or in the main outline and press Return Type whatever s on your mind forget about it for now and get back to whatever you were doing For extra bonus productivity streamlining finesse don t even switch to OmniFocus to do this use the quick entry window page 29 or the clipping service page 31 instead Using on hold or waiting contexts You can create hierarchy in the inbox by using the Edit Outlining menu com mands if you already know that something is going to have sub items Later you can add these groups to an existing project or make them into full fledged projects themselves When you are ready you can process your inbox items by assigning them projects and contexts See page 24 Using the Quick Entry window So the inbox is a quick way to get things off of your mind But there s an even quicker way if you re in the middle of something else and you don t want to switch your brain to a different mode the quick entry window In the OmniFocus preferences there s a setting for the quick entry keyboard shortcut This is a key combination which as long as OmniFocus is open no mat ter what else you re doing on your
36. ere it belongs Depending on your settings in the Inbox Processing section of the Data preferences an inbox item with a project but not a context assigned or vice versa may stay in the inbox or may be automatically filed where it belongs Inbox items have both a Project column and a Context column To assign a project or a context you can click the pop up button next to the appropriate cell to see a menu of all available projects or contexts Alternatively you can type directly into the cell With each letter you type OmniFocus guesses which of your projects or contexts you might mean Most of the time you can get the right one with just a couple of key presses For example if you type aak or ado into a project cell OmniFocus would find your Adopt a Kitten project Once the correct project or context is highlighted you can just leave the cell If you need to create a new project or context just type its name into the cell and press Command Return instead of Return OmniFocus creates the new project or context for you and assigns the action to it To move inbox items to your library e For an individual action just assign a project and a context to it then use the Clean Up command in the Edit menu or the Clean Up button on the toolbar to move it to its proper place e For any inbox item including groups you can click its handle and drag it to the sidebar or the main outline wherever you would like it to go Drop it insi
37. erwrite in the Perspectives window e Click the camera icon at the bottom of the Perspectives window To edit a perspective s options click the kinda arrowy looking button at the bottom of the perspectives window You can choose whether the perspective should open in planning mode or context mode and whether the settings for both modes should be restored The settings for whether to always open in a new window for giving your perspective a keyboard shortcut and for giving your perspective a custom icon are also here To quickly print a perspective without even having to open it click the printer but ton at the bottom of the Perspectives window If you trust that the settings are right and you don t even want to see the Print panel Command click the button to print right away You may find this handy for dashing off a copy of your errands perspective onto some note cards before you run out the door for instance To delete a perspective select it and then click the minus button at the bottom of the Perspectives window Searching for actions or projects 39 40 Reviewing projects Reviewing is a good way to make sure all of the projects in your library are in good shape and are ready for you to take action If you have projects that need more actions added to them or projects that aren t relevant anymore or projects you don t mean to do any time soon following a regular review process can help you keep
38. etty creative with the way you enter dates OmniFocus is rather smart about guessing what you mean For example e 2d 3w 1h ly1m and so on Relative dates and times put the date at a certain amount of time from right now Negative numbers represent times in the past e 2 days 3 weeks 1 hour 1 year 1 month and so on You can use the full names of units too e yesterday tomorrow next thursday last month this friday and so on You can refer to relative dates using common words This next and last have specific meanings this friday always means the Friday in this week next friday always means the Friday in the next week and last friday always means the Friday in last week regardless of what day today is Other units work in the same way e september thurs 2019 and so on If you enter the name of a specific time period the date will be at its beginning So september means Septem ber first e 5 23 08 10a 9 30 09 2 00 PM and so on You can use the short date format as defined in your International system preferences Setting start dates and due dates e 2w sat 4d 5p tues 6a aug 6 tues 5p and so on Mix the available formats however you like e now 9 14 00 tom and so on OmniFocus makes its best guess at things like bare numbers times and word fragments If you think something might work give it a try Setting up repeating actions and projec
39. files to your OmniFocus database This keeps your database from growing need lessly which is especially important if you are syncing your data but the link will break if you delete the file or put it somewhere OmniFocus can t find it To make OmniFocus copy a file into its database for safekeeping hold the Option key as you drop the file or select Embed the file in the document in the Attach File dialog An item with notes or attachments shows its notes icon all the time others only show it when you select them or put the mouse pointer over them Keeping track of the next action in each project Any active project keeps track of the next action that you have yet to complete and styles it differently from the other actions by default the next action is purple This is useful for figuring out what you ought to do to keep your projects moving forward When you are only interested in next actions you can hide everything else Show the view bar by clicking its icon in the toolbar then choose Next Action from the action filtering pop up menu GEEZ For sequential projects where you need to do one thing before another the next action is the only thing you can do right now to make progress on the project For parallel projects where you can do the actions in any order the next action is just the first action in the list and acts as more of a suggestion of what you might want to do next Attaching files and notes to actions a
40. he Planning view outline or the actions in the Context view outline If you have a grouping selected the sorting hap pens inside the groups but the groups themselves stay in the same order In planning mode you can leave projects Unsorted or sort them by Name whether they are Flagged their Due dates Start dates Completed dates Next Review dates Added dates or Changed dates In context mode you can sort individual actions by the order of the Project they belong to whether they are Flagged their Due dates Start dates Completed dates Added dates Changed dates or their Time estimates Action Filter Click this to choose what kind of actions show in the main outline You can choose to see actions with Any Status Next actions just the next thing to do in each eligible project Available actions things you can actually do because they aren t blocked by earlier actions in a sequential project Remaining actions anything that s not completed or Completed actions things you ve already done Estimated Time Filter O Ar Click this to show actions whose time estimates fall within a certain range You can choose to find All actions regardless of their time estimates or actions that are estimated to take less than 5 minutes less than 15 minutes less than 30 minutes less than 1 hour more than 1 hour or an Unknown amount of time for actions you haven t estimated Flag Filter Click this to show pr
41. hoose OmniFocus Send to Inbox e A new item with the highlighted content rich text and embedded images as its note lands in the quick entry window for you to revise and save O Add note card printing to OmniFocus documentation No Project No Context A The Omni Mouth OmniFocus HowTo Printing to 3x5 cards I sincerely hope you ve got somebody writing a user manual The power OF is pretty 4 You have 3 inbox items Cancel _ Save You can change some details of how clippings work with the OmniFocus Clippings preferences From the OmniFocus menu choose Preferences then click the Clip pings tab To change the Clippings Shortcut click in the field and type a key combination To clear the shortcut click the button With the Copy Clippings to setting you can choose whether to clip material into the quick entry window for review and revision or to drop it straight into the Inbox Continued on the next page Clipping material from other applications 31 32 OmniFocus processes material differently depending on which application it was clipped from using application specific plug ins For example when you clip con tent from Mail in Mac OS X 10 5 the new action has the message s subject line as a title and its note has a link to the original message You can select an application in the plug in list to see details about how it will process clipped content You can also turn off plug ins y
42. ilbox select Archive processed messages and choose a mailbox Otherwise they are deleted The Allowed From addresses list is automatically filled with any email addresses on the Me card in Address Book You can add more addresses if you expect to be sending yourself OmniFocus actions from any other accounts Processing Mail messages into actions The way that messages are processed is pretty detailed and you have a lot of power in how you can format your items some examples are on the next page e The subject and body of the message are joined into a single block of text e The first line and any other lines starting with double hyphens become new actions Other lines become notes for the preceding action e To specify a project use gt greater than sign or double colons followed by a project name or abbreviation The colons are nicer for the iPhone because they are on the first shifted keyboard rather than the less accessible math keyboard The project string is matched exactly as if it was entered in a project cell in OmniFocus e To specify a context use at sign followed by a context name or abbrevia tion Like project names the context name is matched exactly as it would be in OmniFocus e To enter start or due dates use number sign followed by some date ex pression The same expressions you use in OmniFocus tomorrow 9 30 2008 2w and so on can be used in mail messages If there is o
43. ke to use Keep reading to learn about license types e Click the Save button Licensing OmniFocus has three different types of licenses e Personal This license is for your personal use and will only be available on this computer when you are logged on as the user who installed the license You can install this license on more than one computer but only for your per sonal use If a personal license is available the application will use it instead of other types of license e Computer You can use this license on this computer and so can any other user of this computer However you should not install this license on more than one computer If both a network license and a computer license are available the application will prefer the computer license e Network This license sits on your network and is available to any user on the network However only a certain number of users indicated by the number of seats can use the license at one time OmniFocus will only use a net work license if neither a personal nor a computer license is available To remove a license e Select the license you want to remove e Click the Delete License button Software Update preferences OmniFocus can automatically use your internet connection to check for new and updated versions of itself you can get to the automatic update options by choosing Preferences from the OmniFocus menu then clicking the Update
44. legated to other people You can t actually do anything until you hear back from that person all you can do is wait for them to finish it and maybe nudge them about it every now and then So an action like get annotated pterodactyl brochure draft back from Dennis might go in your Waiting Dennis context Second you might have some contexts that you don t expect to be available to you any time soon You could put your Frankfurt context on hold when you re in London or put your Boss context on hold until she comes back from vaca tion and any actions assigned to them would become unavailable This helps you see which actions and projects aren t likely to make progress until your situation changes Dropping contexts If there s a context you don t intend to use anymore such as the office for a job you left or a person who transferred to a different department you can drop it All of your old actions that were assigned to it stay assigned to it but the context doesn t appear in your Remaining contexts sidebar Any remaining actions still assigned to a dropped context become unavailable and move to the No Context group of the context mode sidebar Adding stuff to the inbox The inbox is a kind of intermediary area between your brain and your OmniFocus library Whenever you have something important that you don t want cluttering up your mind but you re not quite ready to meticulously file it away in th
45. n idea of what this means any project you create may contain some things to do while you re out run ning Errands some Phone calls some things to do at your Office some things to talk to your Boss about and so on Switch to context mode by clicking the contexts button in the toolbar Fine While the planning mode s blue sidebar holds your projects the context mode s purple sidebar holds your contexts OmniFocus comes with a few contexts already created for you Add some new con texts by clicking the plus button below the sidebar or double click an existing con text s name to change it Make as many contexts as you need for the various places and modes you have for doing work Home Office Mac Errands Phone and so on You can always add more contexts later on when you find that you need them Online Boot Camp Phone ie stinks Catelyn Tutorial 3 Create and assign contexts Now go back to planning mode by clicking the Projects icon in the toolbar Open the pop up menu on each action where it says No Context and choose from the contexts you just saw in context mode to assign a context to each action a Make Carrot Cake O buy carrots eggs amp vanilla extract Errands O ask Ned about the exact measurements of his Ned recipe O bake cake Home v Errands Photograph Model Ships O call Catelyn to ask about rigging Office O setup backdrop amp lights Mac Fae ah Mac Email en M
46. n text representation of your data and it happens to be compatible with the light to do application TaskPaper from Hog Bay Software Of course you don t need TaskPaper to use your editor of your choice e Simple HTML This is a single file HTML representation of your data the stylesheet and even the icons are embedded in the HTML If you are profi cient with CSS you should be able to restyle the result however you like franca for applications old and new on all platforms as it s just all of your data in a plain text file with its columns separated by commas Once you other format or open it in applications that understand it like OmniPlan If you re having trouble persuading other applications to read the non ASCII characters in your CSV file such as accented letters or non Roman charac ters try exporting with the UTF 16 CSV option and importing that into the other application This makes it easier for some applications to detect the correct encoding and interpret your characters properly plain text export you can just give it a txt extension and open it in the text e Comma Separated Values CSV and CSV UTF 16 CSV is a kind of lingua have your data in CSV format it s easy to run scripts on it convert it to some Exporting your database to different formats 51 REFERENCE Using the inspectors The inspector window is a central place for setting the attributes of actions groups projects a
47. nd contexts You can use it to examine or change one or many selected items When you select something in the sidebar or the outline the inspector win dow automatically switches to the applicable inspector Each inspector has controls that are relevant to the type of item you have selected and some of these controls overlap between different types of items Project This sets which project an action or group belongs to You can use this as an alternative to finding the destination project in the sidebar and drop ping the item there Type You can choose whether the selected group or project s contained ac tions should become available sequentially or in parallel that is one at a time or all at once You can also turn a project into a single action list for contain ing unrelated one time actions Status For projects the status can be Active a project you re still working on On Hold a project you ve set aside for some day in the future Com pleted a project you ve successfully finished or Dropped a project you ve decided not to pursue anymore For contexts the status can be Available a context you still intend to use On Hold a context whose actions aren t available for you to work on or Dropped a context you don t expect to use anymore Context This sets the selected action s assigned context just like choosing one in the Context column of the main outline e Default Context This
48. nd projects 19 20 Making a project sequential or parallel Some projects consist of actions that can be done in any order like picking up items at a few different shops these are parallel projects Other projects require one ac tion to be done before the next one starts like building a papier mach pterodactyl these are sequential projects In a parallel project all incomplete actions are avail able and the next action is just the first one in the list In a sequential project only the next action is available Whether a project is sequential 4 or parallel sf is shown by the pair of arrows by the right side of its row in the outline To switch to the other type just click the icon You can also choose a type from the inspector If you find yourself using one type much more often than the other you can change the default setting in the Data preferences Using action groups The actions in a project can be organized hierarchically This is useful for keeping track of complicated projects or breaking actions into smaller actions without creating a whole separate project Action groups just like projects can be parallel or sequential This means you can put parallel groups inside of sequential projects and vice versa to represent complicated dependencies To give an action some child actions thus turning it into a group e Select the action you want to be the parent of the new group e Choose Add Child from the Edit
49. ner document e If the file you want to import is not a kGTD document make sure it has the hierarchy you want and has a column for each kind of value you want to import title start date due date and so on e From the File menu choose Import e Choose the OmniOutliner file you d like to import If it is a kGTD document OmniFocus automatically figures out how to import it properly and you re done If it s an ordinary OmniOutliner document you ll have to help it along a bit carry on to the next steps e A column mapping dialog appears For each column in the original file choose an OmniFocus column to receive the data e All of the data is imported as a single new project If you want the top level items of the outline to become their own projects just select all the contents of the new project and choose Edit Outlining gt Outdent Backing up your database We ve made OmniFocus err on the side of obsessive paranoid data preservation just in case something bad happens to your database After all we re asking you to put your whole life into this app OmniFocus automatically backs up your database once a day in the folder Documents OmniFocus Backups To change when the automatic backups happen or where they are saved choose Preferences from the OmniFocus menu and use the General pane You can choose to back up once or twice a day and also to back up whenever you quit OmniFocus To manually b
50. nly one date it becomes the due date If there are two each with its own number sign the first becomes the start date and the second becomes the due date e To enter a time estimate use dollar sign time is money followed by some duration expression like 5m 1h and so on you can use the same duration expressions that you use in OmniFocus e You can also add a note on the same line as an action title by separating them with double slashes Anything after the double slashes becomes a note but double slashes in a URL like http omnigroup com don t count Continued on the next page Processing Mail messages into actions 33 34 Here are some examples of actions you could send to yourself Action Note note note note note la la la note la la Another Action gt Project 2 Context 3 Note wheeeeeee I have empty lines in my note ies Gbea Action 3 gt Project 1 Context 1 Same line notes ECO dii YOU are Gime gasae Kind on chang Action 4 friday Due Friday because I only entered one date Action 5 monday friday Starts Monday due Friday Action 6 monday Starts Monday no due date Action 7 Project 3 Written on my iPhone colons work in place of greater than sign Action8 gt p2 c2 2d 5m no spaces needed nor full names Cleaning Up The grouping sorting and filtering settings in the view bar control what parts of your da
51. no more actions to be added and you mark the project complete Estimating action duration Flagging projects and actions On the right end of any project or action row there s a little flag that you can turn on or off The flag has no inherent meaning of priority or anything special like that so you can use it however you like You could for example mark all of the things you d like to get done before lunch topics for a meeting you re about to present at or projects to reconsider the next time you have a chance to think about them It s entirely up to you To flag a project or action click the little flag on the right side of the project or action row in the main outline You can also select any number of actions and proj ects and then choose Set Flag from the Edit menu or click the Flag toolbar button If you flag a project or an action group all of its actions get an implicit ghost flag and are treated as if they were flagged themselves You can still flag them individually if you want them to stay flagged when you remove the flag from the containing item To see only items that are flagged use the Flag State menu in the view bar Keeping track of single actions Sometimes you need to do something that doesn t really fit into a project Make rosemary lemonade or Buy a new cowboy hat for example probably don t contribute to the completion of any particular project To keep track of such ac tions y
52. ojects or actions based on whether they have flags set on them You can choose to see items with Any Flag State Flagged items or Unflagged items Note that flagging an action puts a kind of ghost flag on its parent project making the project count as flagged too and flagging a project ghost flags all of its contained actions Using the view bar to filter and arrange items 37 38 Searching for actions or projects The OmniFocus toolbar includes a Search field for filtering the main outline down to items that contain a certain string of text As you type in it items that don t match disappear dynamically You can search based on action names notes context names or project names When you re done click the clear button on the right side of the field and everything reappears OmniFocus also has a Find and Replace panel like many other applications from the Edit menu choose Find Find and Replace to summon it You can find and replace text in the visible columns of any items that are visible in the main outline Even dates and assigned contexts can be replaced though the context you re replacing with has to match the name of an existing context Using perspectives to store your OmniFocus window settings You may find certain ways of setting up your OmniFocus window that are useful enough to make you want to come back to them again and again your morning glance at what s due today your weekly review or your retrospective of
53. ou re at the office and ready to get some work done you probably don t care to see actions that require you to be at the store at home or at your cottage in Wisconsin So it s useful to selectively view just the actions that fit your context right now To view the actions assigned to a particular context e Make sure you are in context mode an easy way to get there is by clicking the Contexts button in the toolbar Ta w e In the sidebar click the context you are interested in As you select it only actions assigned to that context appear in the main outline e If you like Command or Shift click other contexts to select them at the same time When you find yourself using a certain set of contexts focus and view bar filters pretty often you might want to save them as a perspective see page 38 To see everything in the main outline again deselect all contexts by clicking in an empty area of the sidebar or by Command clicking all of the selected contexts Organizing contexts hierarchically 27 28 Using on hold or waiting contexts You can set a context s status to On Hold with the inspector actions assigned to an on hold context are considered unavailable and they block the progress of sequential projects There are two main situations in which you might want to use on hold contexts First you might create one or more waiting contexts for keeping track of actions that you ve de
54. ou can use single action lists To create a single action list e Make sure you are in planning mode an easy way to get there is by clicking the Projects button in the toolbar T e Choose Add Single Action List from the File menu or from the action menu below the sidebar e Enter a name for your new list and drag it to wherever you d like to keep it Continued on the next page Flagging projects and actions 25 26 You can keep any number of single action lists some people like to make one for each top level folder in their library Others make a Reading list a Shopping list and so on Single action lists are similar to projects you can drag them into folders add actions to them from the Inbox and so on They are different in a couple of ways though e Single action lists are always parallel the actions in them don t block each other from becoming available e All single actions count as next actions since each one is kind of a little tiny project in itself e Single actions appear in a unique style blue text by default Assigning contexts to actions In addition to the hierarchical ways of organizing your actions you can also assign each action a context This indicates where you need to be or what you need to have available in order to complete the action Once your actions have contexts assigned you can selectively view your actions by context to see
55. ou don t intend to use or for which you d rather use the Any Application plug in The OmniFocus Mail Clip O Tron 3000 is a little tool that adds the ability to clip the entirety of the selected message in the Mail message list To install it open the Clippings preferences and then click the button in the lower right corner If you don t install it you can still clip content highlighted in Mail s message content area Processing Mail messages into actions When it s not convenient for you to put data directly into OmniFocus like when you re sitting at a someone else s computer you can send a specially formatted email to yourself and OmniFocus will process it later To set it up use the OmniFocus Mail preference pane To turn on Mail processing select the Add Mail Rule to create OmniFocus actions checkbox Once the Mail Rule has been added you can tell OmniFocus what kind of messages to look for One way is to look for messages that have omnifocus before the sign in the destination address as in corneliust tomnifocus omnigroup com If your mail service is properly set up for this type of addressing the message arrives in the correct mailbox as if the plus sign and the extra word were not there but they act as a label for special handling The other way is to look for messages whose subject line begins with certain characters by default If you want to keep the messages that OmniFocus processes in a certain ma
56. r fills the entire view 56 Style preferences e Shadow A sharp shadow one pixel below the text this is most effective in white for the etched look that many elements in Mac OS X have these days e Strikethrough A line drawn through the text like the default style for com pleted actions We re not sure why you d want to cross out anything else but hey you re the boss e Underline A line drawn under the text in the color and pattern of your choice e Row Spacing This number specifies in points how much vertical space the item should have before it So essentially adjacent items get farther apart when you increase this number e Child Spacing This number specifies in points how much vertical space should appear between the item and its child items For instance you could make actions in a project appear closer to or farther from the project row itself e Child Indent This number specifies in points how far to the right to indent children of items of this style So if you increase this number for projects in the main outline then the actions inside each project will move further to the right Customizing columns There are a few columns you may or may not want to see in the main outline Context Estimate Start Date Due Date and Completion Date You can use the View gt Columns submenu to choose which of these columns are visible To customize column widths first show the view bar b
57. ry window see pages 28 29 but of course you can also add to the project directly To add an action to a project e Make sure you are in planning mode an easy way to get there is by clicking the Projects button in the toolbar e Select the project either in the sidebar or in the main outline by clicking the index card icon next to its name Or select an already existing action in the project e Press Return or click the Add Action button in the toolbar the new action appears immediately after the item you selected e Type a name for your new action You can move an action between projects by clicking its bullet and dragging it to its new location You can even turn an action into a project by dragging it to the top level of the outline or the sidebar 18 Creating a project Attaching files and notes to actions and projects You can use the notes area of an action or a project to store extra information or materials about the item When you have an action or a project selected click the notes icon on the far right side of the row or press Command apostrophe You can type paste or drop plain text rich text links images or other files in this area Click the notes icon again to hide the notes and attachments Another way to attach a file to an item is to select the item and then choose Attach File from the Edit menu By default OmniFocus creates links to the files you attach rather than adding the
58. t to go find the right project add the action and assign a context For the time being you can put newly arrived stuff in the inbox e Switch to planning mode e Click the Inbox in the sidebar e Press Return to create a new inbox item e Type as descriptive a title as you want to give the item for now e Keep pressing Return and adding whatever bits of work come to mind v Inbox C thingy with Alex No Project oO call someone about the stuffin No Pr the garage O rubber feet O sunday dinner dessert e Oi rhubarb That s it You can add as much information to the inbox as you need using it as a kind of holding area for stuff you haven t yet gotten around to fully adding to your library of projects For extra speedy brain dumping action try the quick entry window see page 29 Whenever you re ready you can reword the items into proper actions assign a project and a context to each item then click the Clean Up button in the toolbar The items shuffle off to where they belong If you want to turn an inbox item into a project instead of an action drag it to the sidebar 14 Tutorial 6 Drop things in the inbox Tutorial 7 Review projects Periodically you should review your projects to make sure they re in good shape For this example imagine you ve been using OmniFocus for a while now long enough to reach the one week review period for some of your projects From the
59. tabase are visible and how they re arranged For instance most of the time you don t care to see actions you ve already completed so you use the action filter to show only remaining actions Sure that s handy but you also don t want OmniFocus pulling stuff out from under you as you re working on it For instance if you mark an action complete you probably don t want it to disappear that very moment you may still change your mind and want to uncheck it or copy its notes into an e mail or just double check that you clicked the right thing Likewise you probably don t want an inbox item to be spirited away the instant you assign a context to it So OmniFocus has a command called Clean Up You can clean up by clicking the Clean Up toolbar button or choosing Clean Up from the Edit menu Cleaning up puts everything where it belongs items that don t match the filter set tings disappear visible items move into the appropriate groups inbox items move to their assigned projects and so on After you change some items you can Clean Up to make sure that your view is up to date Cleaning Up Focusing on certain projects or folders If you know that you want to concentrate for a while on a particular project folder or combination of items the Focus feature can get everything else out of your way To focus sidebar e As you work in planning mode or switch to context mode OmniFocus are the only items in your li
60. ts When you have something that needs to be done more than once you can set it up as a repeating item e Select the item you want to repeat e Open the inspector from the Inspectors menu or by clicking the Inspectors button in the toolbar e Click the Repeat checkbox in the inspector e Enter a repeat interval e Choose how to count the repeat interval You can count from the original as signed date for something that has to happen regularly like paying the rent or from the completion date for something that needs to happen a certain duration after the last time you did it like getting a haircut For example e Start Tuesday 5 00 PM due Tuesday 10 00 PM repeat every 1 week from assigned date take out the trash This repeats from the assigned date because it is necessary to do it at the same time every week regardless of when you last did it e Start today 12 00 AM due today 6 00 PM repeat every 5 days from comple tion date clean the kitchen This repeats from the completion date because the next time you need to do it depends on the last time you did it When you mark a repeating item as complete the next instance of it is created with its start and due dates pushed forward as indicated by the repeat interval If you want an item to stop repeating just turn off the Repeat setting in the inspector Setting up repeating actions and projects 23 24 Estimating action duration If
61. ue by default e Action Groups Bold by default e Notes Smaller and gray by default but in individual notes you can do as much rich text styling as you want In addition you can customize the following Status Based Styles These styles over ride any other styles that may be on an item e Completed Items that have been marked as complete gray and with strikethrough by default e Due Soon Items whose due date is within the soon duration as set in the Data preferences orange by default e Overdue Items whose due date has passed red by default e Blocked Stalled projects and unavailable actions gray by default Below the style list is an Action pop up menu for resetting the selected styles to their default attributes copying the selected styles or pasting onto the selected styles The controls on the right affect the selected style e Font Preview This identifies the selected font and acts as a preview of what the font looks like Note that this only represents the settings that you change with the Choose Font button not the other attributes below Click the preview to open the standard Font panel where you can specify a font family style and size e Text Color The color for the font itself For example next actions appear in purple e Background Color A color to draw behind the item In the case of the Main Outline style or the sidebars Projects and Contexts styles this colo
62. what you ve gotten done lately With perspectives you can save view settings and get back to them whenever you like OmniFocus comes with a few built in perspectives that you can t edit as a way to get back to a few basic states In the Perspectives menu they are e Remaining Items Everything you have left to do e Due Items Your remaining items grouped by due date e Completed Items All of the items you ve already finished e All Items Everything ever This may take a while to load To create a perspective e Set up an OmniFocus window with the view mode columns focused items sidebar selection and view bar settings just the way you like them e From the Perspectives menu choose Show Perspectives Window e Click the plus button at the bottom of the Perspectives window e Type a name for your new perspective Searching for actions or projects There are several ways to open a perspective e Double click the perspective s icon in the Perspectives window e Choose the perspective from the Perspectives menu e Choose Customize Toolbar from the View menu and add the perspective to your toolbar as a button then click it If you want to change an existing perspective you can take a new snapshot e Get a window looking the way you want possibly by opening the existing perspective and then changing a couple of things here and there e Select the perspective to ov
63. y clicking its icon in the tool bar or choosing it from the View menu Then drag the edges of the column headers that appear Your column visibility and width settings are saved with your perspective so you can keep different settings for different situations Customizing columns 57 General preferences To get to the General preferences just choose Preferences from the OmniFocus menu then click the General icon if it is not already selected The General preferences pane contains settings for the Quick Entry window see page 28 and how often the database should be backed up There s also a setting for how hierarchical project and context names should be displayed in the main outline Say you have contexts called Home and Office each with another context called Mac inside it When you see those contexts in planning mode s context column you might want to see their hierarchy in order to tell them apart You might also want to see the folder hierarchy for projects in con text mode When you turn on the Show full hierarchy setting the contexts appear as Home Mac and Office Mac If you re not a fan of the colon you can choose or enter a different separator in the field to the right this is used in the grouping headers and smart match cells whether you turn on the full hierarchy setting or not Data preferences To get to the Data preferences just choose Preferences from the OmniFocus menu then click the D
64. y one that matters Step 1 Archive old data If you have been using OmniFocus for more than a couple of months you may want to archive your old unused items before setting up synchronization Choose Move Old Data to Archive from the File menu your database will be slimmer and faster to sync especially on iPhone or iPod touch Step 2 Choose a sync method D J a Bonjour Disk e MobileMe WebDAV In order to synchronize you need to keep a server or sync copy of your data base somewhere and let OmniFocus check up on it periodically There are several types of places you can keep the sync copy each represented by a button on the Sync pane MobileMe This service from Apple includes iDisk online file storage if you have a subscription this is the easiest way to put your OmniFocus database where all of your Macs and devices can synchronize with it over the Internet Bonjour This is a very simple way to let Macs and devices on your local network discover and sync with a copy of your OmniFocus database As it doesn t require special setup or a subscription to a service this is the simplest way to synchronize Macs or devices locally Disk Anything that you can mount and edit as a disk in Finder such as a portable USB drive a Time Capsule on your local network or a file server that you access over the internet can be used to synchronize your OmniFocus database Note that iPhone and iPod touch can t mount
65. you like you can note how long you expect actions to take Then when you re looking for something to do you can choose based on how much time you have on hand To display the time estimate column in the main outline choose View Columns gt Estimate To assign a time estimate click in the estimate column for an action then type a duration By default the numbers you type are interpreted as minutes 5m and so on You can also type larger units like hours h and days d To group and sort by time estimates use the grouping and sorting menus in the view bar Marking actions complete When you ve finished an action just click its checkbox its status changes to com pleted If it was the project s next action and the action that follows it is available that action becomes the next action Another way to mark something complete is to select the whole row and press Space You can also right click any number of selected items and choose Com plete from the contextual menu or click the Complete toolbar button If you mark an action group complete all of its child actions become complete too If you re marking an action that you actually completed a while ago you can adjust the completion date so that your records are accurate Just select the item open the inspector and edit the Completed field Remember that regardless of the actions they contain projects stay active until you decide that there are

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