From time to time I have a list of tasks in a single document that I would like to be able to turn into multiple tasks via mail drop. It seems like this sort of thing was possible in the past by sending an e-mail to myself (for the name of the function).
Can I still do this? I can’t seem to find what I need in the help doc or the forums.
Thanks for any ideas you might have.
Douglas
Hey Douglas,
Sending tasks to your Inbox via Mail Drop, can only be done one at a time.
There is a however a workaround to this that could potentially save you some time. If you add the list of tasks you have into the body of the email you send through Mail Drop they will be added to the notes for the new action in your Inbox. When you open OmniFocus, you can view this note, and copy this list of tasks. If you then, click outside of the notes field, and paste this selection each item in the list will be add as its own action.
Hope this help!
While this can’t be done from MailDrop, if you have OF for iOS, you could consider apps like Drafts (which has built-in ways to process text, one of which is a list of things to OF) or Workflow (which allows you to build workflow processes, including a list to OF from the clipboard or any text editor that supports share sheets)
Happy to help if it’s useful.
ScottyJ
Thanks ScottyJ for the tip. Thanks too Valyria.
I have drafts and see that they have a good extensions library that allows different ways of getting text into other apps. This site by Sven Fechner (simplicitybliss.com/blog/ultimate-guide-drafts-actions-omnifocus) gives a good overview of the different options.
The one that fits my needs allows me to list several tasks with notes for each task if I have them. The work around goes like this drafts --> reminders --> OF.
Here is Mr Fechner’s description of the action :
Drafts → Reminders → OmniFocus
Agile Tortoise, developer of Drafts, already provides an Action that takes your entries to OmniFocus via the iOS Reminders App: It adds the task to a specific Reminders list and calls OmniFocus afterwards. If you turned on Reminders Capture in OmniFocus’ settings and pointed it to the same Reminders list, it’ll simply pick up the Action and add it to your Inbox.*
…
Then he writes: OmniFocus List via Reminders by maddenwalker allows you to define a note delimiter, for example “|” (pipe) with the text in the same row after it becoming the note of your task
The ability to add a note after the task name is great. My note in Drafts would look like this, for example:
Write thank you note to Omni Ninjas | they did a great job helping me with XYZ problem.
When processed this makes an OF task “Write thank you note to Omni Ninjas” with the note reminding me that " they did a great job helping me with XYZ problem. "
So that is what I figured out and it seems to work well. The Drafts action takes your text, parses it and sends it to a Reminder’s list (you can choose which list is used, if you wish), then OF takes the items in this list and transfers it to the OF inbox. The listed items in Reminders is then erased.
Hope that helps someone else looking to solve the challenge of creating multiple tasks in OF from a single text file.
Awesome, @boogerus! I use Drafts and Workflow (another awesome app) to move text to OF via Reminders all the time.
I like to take notes in iA Writer Pro, so I built a workflow that looks at every line of text, identifies which are tasks (using GitHub-flavoured markdown syntax of “- [ ]”), then turns those lines into Reminders, adding text to notes if there is a delimiter of // in the line. The Reminders move into OF as part of the standard OF integration.
This is probably super nerdy, but it lets me take notes the way I like to, and automatically move the action items in those notes to OF. It’s the extensibility of OF that really sets it apart as a task manager for me.
Cheers,
ScottyJ
