Omnifocus 3 for Mac, Calendar sync

Hello again,

After adding the 30 in, this popup appeared with the highlighted text shown on the screen shot
‘Script Error Calendar got an error: Can’t make -1770 into type date.’

If it is any constellation I have got a Udemy course on Apple Scripts and (hopefully) soon will be much more capable.

Thank you again, I really do appreciate this.

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+1 For calendar sync. Omni Focus isn’t a calendar and doesn’t excel there at all. I have my own favourite app for that, being Fantastical. If I can’t see my tasks with due dates on a calendar alongside my other calendar entries, then what’s the point of using OF at all? There isn’t for me. I won’t be purchasing until this works. I came to the forum searching for how to send a task to my calendar. I’m shocked to see that it isn’t possible. This is rather basic functionality for software at OF’s price point. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if OF doesn’t sync with OP, which I was considering getting together–but also feel that OF should have a visual timeline as it does have projects, after all. I’m just baffled at all the things OF isn’t vs its price. Sorry for being negative. I really wanted this to work and it’s only my opinion.

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I am disappointed that OF3 doesn’t support calendar sync (tasks appearing in other calendar apps). I like the Applescript that was provided in this thread, but I know very little about Applescript and need to make some changes for that script to be beneficial for me.

  1. I’d like to sync OF tasks with BusyCal.
  2. I’d like to ONLY sync tasks that are contained within a particular project. The provided script shows ALL Omnifocus tasks in my calendar app, which means hundreds of non-time-sensitive tasks get synced and unnecessarily clutter the calendar.

I experimented with adding language to the script so that it only syncs tasks from a specific project, but I wasn’t successful.

Any experts have any ideas on this?

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+1 vote - please restore OmniFocus reminder integration with Callendar

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I still run Omnifocus 2 in another account in the background for the Calendar link. Please bring the functionality back to Omnifocus.

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I know I’m in the minority here, but I found the automatic sync of tasks from OmniFocus to a calendar an utterly miserable experience for a number of reasons. It seems like a great idea until you experience it:

  • Literally hundreds of trivial tasks cluttering up my calendar - no way to select which are exported
  • Many tasks exported with same due time makes calendar unreadable (e.g. default due time is 9am)
  • No way to explicitly control whether a task appears as all day, multi-day or at a specific time
  • Exported tasks appeared in calendar at due time, defer time ignored
  • Exported tasks all go to the same calendar
  • Issues with technically how to “publish” the calendar, which device is in charge etc.
  • Forecast view would now show items twice: once for the task, again for the exported task in the calendar

This stuff is hard and beset with pitfalls and unintended consequences. I “solved” all these issues with this obsolete project but to make a feature like this useful will require an unholy amount of work and add a lot of complex configuration bloat to the product, at the risk of people trying it once and recoiling in horror at the devastation wrought in their calendar.

OmniFocus has become a very open platform and functionality like this is perhaps better suited to plugins, extensions and scripts that we can choose to use, modify to suit our personal needs and discard as the mood takes us.

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I had much the same experience.

Lol

Actions can have defer and due dates, but I still have the choice of when I will perform them amongst many other possible tasks. Having a task due in a week appear on the calendar isn’t meaningful to me since I still need to decide whether I will do it in the next hour, tomorrow, or 5 minutes before the deadline, or even break it down into smaller actions. OF is the place to juggle all those competing tasks.

Once you have decided on priorities and task execution, it’s entirely appropriate to create a calendar entry if you decide to allocate a fixed time block for a task, with a link back to the project or action in OF.

True: I tend to work the other way around for that reason - i.e. create tasks in OmniFocus FROM the calendar IF there is something I have to do in preparation for the event (with a script that gives lets me pick events).

That way I can turn the task into a project and break it down if necessary.

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I’m switching back to OF from Todoist, and the only thing I’m missing is having my tasks appear in my calendar It was really helpful to have a preview of the next week of tasks to help me with scheduling. I don’t need full sync, just a read-only ical feed like we used to have. I was hoping maybe this would have been included in the new online subscription but I couldn’t find it anywhere during my trial.

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I guess in OmniFocus you can’t have your tasks appear in your calendar.

Of course, you CAN have your calendar appear in your tasks. So…?

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I haven’t been making good use of Omnifocus for this very reason. Please bring this back. Until then, I will not be paying for any more upgrades.

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absolutley

Yes please to calendar sync. Maybe a checkbox in the info panel to select which items get added to the calendar.

I’m just revisiting this thread to see if there’s been any further comment or progress on this . . . . . to me, it’s extraordinary that such a basic feature isn’t included in the current version of OmniFocus.

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+1 to restore OmniFocus Calendar integration. What is wrong with giving options to users? If you like it, use it… If you don’t, don’t…

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Adding another plus 1 for this option. I also emailed support, and asked if with Omni Automation it would be possible to write to a calendar. I have the iOS app, and I would think the option to allow OmniFocus to read the calendars would also allow writing.

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Just curious if anyone has heard anything about the possibility of calendar sync coming back. I love many things about OmniFocus, but the lack of integration with OmniPlan or calendars is both surprising and appalling. We live in a visual world, and graphic interfaces have become the norm — I don’t know how much longer people will want to view their tasks/projects simply as lines and lines of text on a screen.

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Maybe I’m confused by this thread. My version of OF3 syncs with my Mac calendar and things show up in the forecast view so I don’t understand?

@DugB ----It doesn’t really “sync” with your calendar – it displays events from your calendar within OmniFocus . . . . . but it doesn’t display items from OmniFocus in your calendar. It’s one-way only, sort of a “half-sync”.

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