Old Projects - Need to Retain Their Status from Several Months Ago

OmniFocus OmniFocus for Mac
#1

I’m a novice user trying to figure out the best way to do something in OmniFocus, and I thought I’d throw it out to the community to see if anyone has suggestions for how to handle this particular case. I realize that this may not be the way the product is intended to be used, so there might not be a good answer for this one.

I use OmniFocus projects as part of a monthly report to my supervisor. I have one folder per month, and after each report I duplicate the folder and make changes as necessary to start preparing for the next month. Since many of my projects span several months, that means that I’m left with a lot of old items that were incomplete at the time the report was made. That makes using Review difficult because of the number of older “incomplete” items.

I’m trying to find a method for saving or archiving these old folders, but I need a solution that lets me go back and see what a project’s or task’s status was several months ago. Because of that, I can’t really go back to June for example and mark something complete, because in a few months I might need to go back and review June again.

Ideally I would like to be able to selectively archive specific projects, but it looks like archiving in OmniFocus doesn’t work that way. According to the manual, when archiving I pick a date, and “any items completed before that date, or dropped items that haven’t been changed since that date, will be moved to the archive”. Because of the way I’m working and because of my need to see a project and task statuses 6 months ago, I have some items in my old projects that will never have a completed date.

Does anyone else use OmniFocus this way, and do you have suggestions for how you handle it?

#2

I use it that way for some reference stuff which storing in any other app is a pain.

Put them into one folder, then select all the projects and tasks in that folder, and change the review date in whenever you want to deal with it.

Inspector:

That way you can still, for example, copy as links the old projects for a quick reference, and it doesn’t mess up your review.

#3

Hi Kamil,

Thanks for your suggestion. I gave this a try and put all of my old projects into a folder as you suggested. Since I essentially never want to review these again and since I want to retain them only for future reference as necessary, I made the Next Review several years out.

However, when I try to review, I’m still seeing a lot of these old items in my list. I verified that the projects have the correct Next Review date (01/01/2020), but all of the tasks that aren’t checked as completed are still showing up in the review list.

Am I perhaps missing a step?

Thanks!

#4

Select All ▸ Go to “Edit” ▸ “Mark as Reviewed.”

OR
Right click on the Toolbar ▸ Customize
Then add the button “Mark as Reviewed.” Select all and click the “Mark as Reviewed” button.

If it still remains like you said, it’s another bug in OF2.

#5

Thanks, kamil!

Mark as Reviewed did the trick. The review looks MUCH cleaner now.

I appreciate the tip.