How to 'Reboot' your system with OF2

OmniFocus OmniFocus for Mac
#1

I’m using the opportunity of OF2 to re-boot my whole OF database. After many years a thorough spring clean is badly needed. If my reviews were better it probably wouldn’t be necessary, but with other changes in my life recently I decided a clean start is best.

Below is the way I have found that (sort of) works. There may well be better options (please weigh in if you have a better method)

There are chunks of my OF1 database that are ‘clean’ though and re-typing everything is not very efficient.

Here goes…

1. Sync OF1 or OF2?

The ability to have both OF1 and OF2 open simultaneously is great. It means that you can migrate over time rather than having a massive single task.

I decided to leave OF1 syncing with my iOS devices for the time being - 99% of the time I use OF on the Mac. At a suitable point the iOS sync will switch to OF2. If you have a second email address handy, you could setup a second account on the OmniSync server (or your own Webdav server) and conceivably use your iPhone for OF1 and your iPad for OF2 (or put the phone app on your iPad and have both)

2. Starting from Scratch with OF2

Here is my approach:

  1. Delete the Welcome tasks and folders that come with OF2
  2. (Re)create your standard contexts and folders (in my case I am cleaning up and simplifying both)
  3. Add in any new projects that you create in OF2 from this minute onward - two databases is going to be painful, but there is no point in adding them in two places.

3. Move any ‘clean’ old projects from OF1 to OF2.

Regrettably, you can’t drag and drop directly from OF1 to OF2 but you can from OF2 to OF2. The way I have found that sort of works is:

  1. Use a copy of your OF1 database.
  • In OF1 use the File–>Export to save the database to a suitable folder (or the desktop)
  1. Open the file in OF2.
  • Navigate to the file in finder and double click on it (or right mouse click, open) to open the file. A NEW OF2 window will open with a nice colourful banner across the top to show that it is not your live database). Nice feature that, thanks Omni.
  1. Find the ‘Old’ Project and drag it to the live database
  • To find the old project you either need to navigate to it through the sidebar, or click in the sidebar cmd-A to select all and use the search. Hopefully the search will be fixed in the future. At the moment it is more of a ‘Filter’ on the selected items.
  • Having located the project, drag it from the copy of OF1 Data into the sidebar of the Live OF2 Data.
  • OF2 will create any folders, contexts etc. when it copies across, so there is probably going to be some tidying up if you (like me) are simplifying your system.

Is there a better, cleaner mechanism for getting just bits of OF1 into OF2? if so, please share.

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