Hello,
When hitting Complete on a task that is set to be due again in 1 week (for example), and that event was last due some time in the past (let’s say three weeks ago) is there a way to make OF only set the next due date in the future?
UPDATE: I incorrectly explained the issue I was brining up… So I’ve put that into a block quote below. This better explains it:
What doesn’t work well for me, and doesn’t make any functional sense to me, is that the way “Repeat every…” option is handled. It doesn’t move the next due date into the future if the last due date was more than the selected timeframe in the past. Meaning… If I click DONE on an event that was due a month ago, and it is set to Repeat Every Friday, then it will be next due on a Friday three weeks in the past. Then two weeks, then one week, and then this week, and only then will clicking DONE make it due NEXT Friday.
IGORE THIS, LEFT FOR REFERENCE ONLY: The current behaviour is that it set the due date 1 week after it was previously due. But this can result in a new past due date. If it was months ago that it was due, and one is catching it up to the present, the basically one has to edit the dates manually. It seems so obvious to me that most people would want the next due date to leap forward into being a future date (rather than days, weeks, or months in the past) that I figure there must a setting I have noticed, where this can be turn on.
Is there a reason you say, “if you must use due dates…”? Is there a reason to favour deferring an item than having it Due by a date?
Also, I notice I made a mistake in my original explanation. The “Due again” and “Defer until” behaviour works as I would expect. If I have it set to 1 week, for instance, then it will be due or deferred 1 weeks AFTER I click Complete.
What doesn’t work well for me, and doesn’t make any functional sense to me, is that the way “Repeat every…” option is handled. It doesn’t move the next due date into the future if the last due date was more than the selected timeframe in the past. Meaning… If I click DONE on an event that was due a month ago, and it is set to Repeat Every Friday, then it will be next due on a Friday three weeks in the past. Then two weeks, then one week, and then this week, and only then will clicking DONE make it due NEXT Friday.
Upon further investigation, it looks like that’s just the way Repeat Every option works. I’ve not managed to think of any situation where someone might want to have their Repeat Every events being due on a past date. But perhaps that’s useful for some folk.
What I would like is that if I hit COMPLETE on an task that is set to repeat every Friday (for instance) then even if the previous due date was Friday four weeks ago, the next due date will be the coming Friday… not a Friday three weeks ago, and then two weeks ago, etc.
Rather than trying to catch such tasks up to the present, I see that I will have to simply manually set the due date to the next Friday, and then (so long as I do that task each week) it will stay up to date with the present.
I’m not saying due dates are not important, but I try to keep them off the to-do list and either on the calendar (placed during Review) or in the form of a consequence (if the due date goes by then have a task to review that project or have a task to recover from the consequence–much more useful than a due date).
In the thread referenced by KyleS there is the statement by Anne “Repeat Every will generate a new item where the defer &/or due dates are rolled forward from the defer/due dates of its predecessor, not the completed date.” Maybe the task does actually need to be repeated three times even though it is now passed over three times and one has to play catch up?
