Is Archiving at the Project or Action level?

When I select File>Move Old Data to Archive…, a new window opens and asks me to fill in a date field “Archive completed or dropped items from before:” If I choose a date like 12/1/14, are items archived based on the completion or dropped date of a project, or are they archived based on the completion date of an individual action?

My concern is that completed actions of a repeating project will be archived from my database before the project repeats, losing those actions for the newly created repeating project. If archiving is done at the project level, then this is a non-issue. If archiving is done at an individual action level, then I will have a problem.

On a related note, I have several projects that are never completed or repeated. They simply consist of a number of repeating group actions. So if OmniFocus archives at a project level, I will end up with a lot of completed group actions that are never archived. Any suggestions on how to clean-up completed group actions if archiving is done at the Project level?

The OmniFocus Help on Archiving mentions items are archived, without defining what items are. Are items projects, group actions, actions, or all of the aforementioned?

I don’t have the text from Omni which proves either way, but I archive all the time in the middle of repeating projects (like single-action quarterly and annual projects) without losing the completed actions themselves.

AFAIK and based on what @TheWart has said (thank you for the clarification!), automatic archiving is by date and as tasks.

My personal experience is similar to yours. I ignore the dialog box when it asks to archive because I have always been rather uncertain what really is to happen and I just don’t like taking an absent-minded archiving approach to a lot of potentially complex Project structures. I also see no rationale to create an archive that is as I understand just a backup of completed tasks in an active database. I have that with the local backups and the sync database. Finally, I also see no reason to archive since it ultimately does not reduce the size of the active database (smaller active database sizes mean faster sync performance).

I have wished (and requested) for many years that OG would be intelligent and forward-thinking enough to build in a feature that allows automatic archives of completed Projects (with a on/off selection dialog box - maybe someone can point me to an AppleScript that does this). The completed Project would be archived AND removed from the active database. As it is, I manually open the archive database, drag+drop completed Projects from active to archive, and then delete the completed Project in the active database. Caution: When you are still on OF1, this method has bugs that duplicate empty folder structures throughout the archive database (and yes, that bug was also reported many years ago). I think the bug is gone in OF2.

Hope this helps.


JJW

1 Like

Based on @TheWart experience, it appears that archiving is done at the project level, and not at the task level. Otherwise, he would be losing some of his completed actions which he stated is not happening.

@DrJJWMac stated that it was his understanding that archiving is just a backup of completed tasks and does not reduce the size of the active database. I wouldn’t thought that would be the case. I would have thought that the archived items would be removed from the active database, thereby reducing the size of the active database. After all, the menu choice is move old data to Archive, not copy old data to Archive.

I think I will create a small database just to test what happens to projects, group actions, and individual actions when data is archived. For this purpose, I will probably archive any items that have been completed or dropped within the last day so it won’t take long to get to the bottom of how archiving actually does work. I will report back as soon as my testing has been completed.

Thanks for the input guys!

Ah well. Given still the confusion, now you see why I just avoid the archive option all together.

Essentially, I NEVER want any TASKS or PROJECTS automatically moved out of my active database in a “hidden” manner, especially to have them disappear from the active database (for whatever reason). I want control on what gets moved, and I specifically want that control to be at least also at the full PROJECT level on a Project-by-Project selection basis.

Backup … that I understand as a real blessing. Archive (as implemented) … that is the work of the devil!

So, I do it manually.

Looking forward to the results of your tests.


JJW

I just have a reminder task to archive each quarter (for a school teacher that is an easy break between project due dates). Since you control both where the archive resides and can open the archived file to search it, don’t worry about lost data if you can settle on a date that is after your current big project.

Archiving really speeds up syncing of tasks across clients for me.

So, archiving likely removes tasks from the active database? I would not see how syncing becomes more efficient otherwise.

I do an archiving on a weekly basis during my review. I move Projects out as appropriate.

Should I ever have to recover data, I would not like having to remember when the date of the last sync was as a basis to search. Should I consider your method, I also would not like having to remember when the end date of my last big project was as a way to define the automatic archive end date. That is just too much “background” info that should not be part of my job to carry in my head and/or search for afterward.

Give me an “Archive Completed Projects” menu option that presents a dialog list with checkboxes. That would be the real intelligent design concept here.


JJW

Omni Support will be better help than me, so I encourage you to send them an email for clarification or for a future feature request.

Archiving removes completed or dropped items, where items is the word you’ve rightfully noted is vague. However, since tasks cannot be dropped, we can assume the archival is happening at the project level or only at the task level for repeating tasks, i.e. I do not see the “email TPS report to boss” action from 3 months ago because the current iteration of the task is still deferred for another three days.

Although you can archive whenever you want, I don’t think the function is designed to be used weekly if you need to decide if the recently completed project should be archived or not. I would suggest using the following brightline for archiving:

If your completed or dropped projects might need to be searched in the next month or two for action details relevant to another ongoing project, do not archive.

If you are unconcerned about the sync speeds you have now, perhaps archiving shouldn’t be an issue for you. Once you mark a project as does it falls off of most perspective views anyway. You can always “unarchive” it by creating a perspective of recently completed or dropped projects to achieve the desired review and still have your action details handy.

A funny thing happened on my road to discovering how archiving works in OmniFocus… I fell into a rabbit hole of issues about working with multiple databases in OmniFocus!

But before taking the readers of this posting down into that rabbit hole with me, I will give you the short-and-sweet of it about OmniFocus archiving.

According to Omnigroup technical support, archiving is in fact done at the project level, not at the group action or individual action level. This certainly supports @TheWart experience. So OmniFocus users do not have to worry about losing completed actions of uncompleted repeating projects due to archiving data before a specific date. Only projects that have been completed or dropped before the chosen date will be archived.

This does present some maintenance issues for never-completed projects which contain many repeating group actions. The archival process will never remove these completed group actions from the database, so an alternative approach needs to be taken to clean out these actions at some point in the future. Certainly by converting these group actions into projects would allow the Archive process to prune these completed group actions from the main database.

I intended to discover how archiving works in OmniFocus by creating a small database for testing purposes. But I soon found out that some of the things I was doing with the test database (deleting perspectives, archiving items that had been completed just the day before), were also happening with my main working OmniFocus database, which was both unintended and unwanted.

So a quick call to Omnigroup’s technical support unit helped me to recover lost perspectives, understand how to best work with multiple databases, and get me the answers to the questions I had about archiving. The tech support staff at Omnigroup are awesome!

The issues about working with multiple databases are interesting, but I will save my comments for this topic under a later and separate posting.

Because the answers I was given for my questions about archiving were very clear, I decided to forgo my testing of the archival process on my own, and avoid the issues of multiple databases, and just trust what I was told.

[quote=“rstockfleth, post:9, topic:12255, full:true”] …
According to Omnigroup technical support, archiving is in fact done at the project level, not at the group action or individual action level. This certainly supports @TheWart experience. So OmniFocus users do not have to worry about losing completed actions of uncompleted repeating projects due to archiving data before a specific date. Only projects that have been completed or dropped before the chosen date will be archived.
[/quote]

Thank you for the details. Basically, the answer is, Tasks are not removed one-by-one, completed Projects are removed.

For my workflow, I would still wish for a menu option to Archive by Project using a dialog selection list.


JJW

At least in OF1’s archiving function, completed individual tasks from single action lists are archived.