How to add action after finding project?

I’m probably overlooking something, but I am struggeling with the following.

I use search on the iPad to find a certain project. The project shows up in a list (projects and actions which meet the search criteria). When I tap on the project I go to the project itself. However, I want to add an action to that project. How do I do that?
The trick I am using now is to tap on an existing action of the project and then within the action go to the project. Then I can add an action to the project. However, I think there must be a more efficient way to do this. And the trick doesn’t work when the project has no actions.

Hi there! I usually go about this a different way: I tend to add the action first, then assign it to a project inside the action editor. To do this:

  1. Tap on the New Inbox Item button in the upper right corner.
  2. Type out the title of the new action, and fill in any other info.
  3. Tap the Project field in this editor.
  4. Type in my project search term in the list that pops up.
  5. Select the matching project from the list.

If you’re already searching for a project by its name, this should give you the same result as finding the project ahead of time - even though we hit New Inbox Item, assigning a project to that new item right away makes it an action in that project, taking it out of the Inbox. Does that help?

Thanks. That’s a good way to add actions to a project.

Now I have been thinking more about it, I guess I’m more looking for a direct open function. Often I want to open a project to add some notes. After that I often also want to add an action. Adding notes is no problem after a search but adding an action is.

Another way to go to a certain project is by clicking on the folders until I reached the project. Unfortunately this is a slow proces on my iPad 3 (on my iPhone 5s this is quick, but I use OF on my iPad 90% of the time).

Ah, I see! I can understand how my approach wouldn’t be great in that situation.

If you haven’t already, would you mind sending in an email describing this workflow? We can try to figure out a way to ease this snag, and our support team might have other ideas that I’ve missed here.

Thanks! I will send an email.

By the way, on my iMac I can add actions as well as notes to a project after a search.

I have a similar snag. Is this what you meant?

I have a project-oriented perspective with a list of projects I browse. I see a project that needs an action added to it. I would expect I could long-tap the project name and get a context menu “Add action”, but I don’t. The best I can do is:

  1. Long tap and “go to project” (focus project? I forgot, I don’t have my iPad in front of me)
  2. Click the add action + with a circle. Add the action.
  3. Now I want to get back to the perspective I was looking at. I just… wait. There is no easy way.
  4. So I click back several times until I’m back at the home screen.
  5. What perspective was I looking at again? Gotta remember… click that perspective.
  6. Click perspective. Scroll down to project I was at prior to step 1.

The “New Inbox Item” would work, but it just doesn’t seem intuitive or natural to me, and I didn’t even think of doing this until I saw this post. Long-tapping a project and getting an “Add action” command seems like such a natural flow of usage.

It is a variation on the way I work. I want to do multiple things with a project after finding it, I usually don’t return to my search results.

I just received a reply from Omnifocus and they too pointed me to the long press on a project. I didn’t know this function. It solves my problem as I can add notes to a project now and add an action as well. :)