Is there a way to know when a specific copy of a repeated action was added?

[giladherzfeld]

For every “regular” un-repeating action, I can see when it was added. In case I keep pushing forward an action’s defer/planned date, it helps me keep track of how long I’ve been pushing it.

But this is useless in repeating actions because the added date is the date the original repeating action was created - I can see some sense in keeping that date, but it’s way less important than the date of the creation of the specific copy - If I keep postponing the defer date of a repeated copy I don’t have a way to easily keep track of how long it’s been waiting in the system.

Any workarounds? Anyone else finding this problematic?

[brianogilvie]

Here’s a workaround, In the Completed perspective, find the last completed iteration of the task. When you mark a repeating task as completed, OF appears to actually create a new copy of the task that is marked completed, so the date that the completed task was added is, in fact, the date that you marked it complete. The “new” task is actually the original one.

If you’ve archived since the last time you completed the repeating task, you can open the archive and search for it there. You may need to set preferences for the Inspector to show the Added and Changed fields; it seems like those settings apply to individual OF files, not globally.

Edited to add an example: I have a repeating task called “Close and drain exterior spigots” as part of my repeating project “Winterize house.” The current task, deferred until Nov. 15, says that it was added Dec. 12, 2017, and changed Dec. 7, 2025. In the Completed perspective, the most recently completed iteration says that it was both added and changed on Dec. 7, 2025.

[giladherzfeld]

@brianogilvie

Edited to add an example: I have a repeating task called “Close and drain exterior spigots” as part of my repeating project “Winterize house.” The current task, deferred until Nov. 15, says that it was added Dec. 12, 2017, and changed Dec. 7, 2025. In the Completed perspective, the most recently completed iteration says that it was both added and changed on Dec. 7, 2025.

Oh wow… This explained a lot. I’m kinda disappointed that this is the design they choose to simulate a repetition - to created a new completed action instead of a new copy.
But it also explain the other question I asked two days ago:

Ordering in perspective for repeated actions doesn't make sense - any solution?

Thanks for the suggestion. Though Clean Up doesn’t fix the ordering issue but just cleans up actions that shouldn’t apear in the perspective: The problem I’m facing is the the new copy of the repeated action is inserted straight to the same location of the old copy. By the way this is even more annoying when I think of it… because when I duplicate an item in a perpective it IS added to the bottom - which actually doesn’t really makes sense for an item that I manually duplicate.

[brianogilvie]

@giladherzfeld

Oh wow… This explained a lot. I’m kinda disappointed that this is the design they choose to simulate a repetition - to created a new completed action instead of a new copy.

I can see why they did it that way. As a user, I like being able to see that I first added a given repeating task 5 years ago. If I haven’t deferred or otherwise edited a repeating task, its Changed date indicates the last time I did it; if I have done so, I can look in the Completed perspective (or the archive) if I want to know the last time I completed it.

[kcase]

@giladherzfeld

Oh wow… This explained a lot. I’m kinda disappointed that this is the design they choose to simulate a repetition - to created a new completed action instead of a new copy.

Early versions of OmniFocus did this the other way, where each repetition was a new copy of the action rather than a record of the action being completed. One of the downsides to that approach is that when someone completed a repeating action on two devices that weren’t currently in sync (such as when one device was offline), they’d end up with multiple repeating actions instead of just one. They’d have to delete one of those extra repeating actions to get things back to their expected state.

By changing the logic to generate new actions for the completion records instead, the worst thing that happens is someone might end up with multiple records of completing the action (because they checked it off multiple times), but there will only ever be a single active copy of the repeating action.

(Another benefit of this approach is that a link to a repeating action will refer to the active copy of the action, rather than a single repetition that will be completed and possibly deleted or archived.)

[giladherzfeld]

Thank you for the detailed explanation, now I understand… I want to ask for a feature that will “reset” the placement of a repeated action in all of the perspectives it’s a member of, after it’s completed. Is there a chance something like that could be implemented?
I’m just hoping to have a way to cause a “new” “copy” of a completed repeated action to behave as if it’s a new copy and be added “freshly” to all perspectives…