Help, new user: OO->OF

OmniFocus OmniFocus for Mac
#1

Hello to All,

I’m new to this forum, and just purchased OF2 for Mac, and find myself confused already how to use it. My plan was to create a Project Outline in OO, hoping I could then import that into OF and set up a timeline of dates for completing both the whole project and each of its component parts. E.g., writing a book with 10 chapters, and setting a sequential timeline to write each chapter, toward a target date. Thought I could just import an outline, make it a project, set an end date for the whole, and divide the whole into ten parts, taking, say, 10 weeks (or months). I don’t see any way to do that, at least efficiently. Am I wrong? Does anyone know of a simple way to do that?

I don’t want to be spending all my time trying to figure out OF 2, instead of working on my project. I didn’t realize there would not be a simple, quick way to do this–to break a single project into parts, and to automatically assign dates (intervals) to each part? Am I missing something obvious?

Thanks for any advice, tips, links to prior discussions (?) etc. of this kind of task.

Mike

#2

You can definitely import an OmniOutliner document.

I’m less sure what you mean by

break a single project into parts, and to automatically assign dates (intervals) to each part

Are you hoping that if you set a due date for the whole project of 10 weeks from now that each action will automatically get a due date one week after the previous?

OmniFocus really isn’t about that sort of scheduling. Chapter 4 might take twice as long as chapter 2. Or you might have a week vacation in there…

#3

Maybe you’re rather looking for something like Omniplan than Omnifocus? I’m not very good at Omniplan, but you could open an Omnioutliner document in Omniplan, select all tasks there, set a general task duration in the task inspector, and click on the button Connection to spread the tasks over a timeline. Omniplan certainly is a much more complicated tool than Omnifocus, but you will have a visual timeline in it, if that is what you are looking for. There is a free download of Omniplan, so you may try it and see if it suits you.