Just wondering if there’s any hope for an intuitive way to reorder tasks in a sequential project, like, I dunno, a move up/move down option under Organize? Or maybe a variation on the current drag-and-drop, except that if you want to move item x under item y, and you position it that way, as in it is clearly positioned below, not below and to the right, it doesn’t end up indented under item y?
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The problem is very easy to solve: Make sure that the mouse pointer is in arrow form. Simply click on the task (that you want to move) to the left of its active status circle, hold down the mouse button, and move the task. Always stay to the left of the status circle!!! Make sure that the project is selected when you reach the desired position.
Thanks, Monica. I’m using an iPad, not a Mac.
I use a keyboard with the iPad.
Command - [ will outdent a task. That’s the left square bracket.
Command - ] will index a task to make the selected task a sub-task. That’s the right square bracket.
Command-Control-Up arrow will move a task up and Command-Control-Down arrow will move a task down.
You also need to be in a perspective that has view settings with an “Organized” structure. Using the “Flexible” structure probably won’t work.
It’s a little tricky to use your finger and try to drag things on a screen.
Moving things around with your finger works just fine with most successful iPad applications, including OmniOutliner, for example.
“Apple just works”, to quote some guy. OmniFocus is different.
If you look at Apple’s Developer Guidelines, you will find, under Drag and Drop, the first Best Practice identified is:
As much as possible, support drag and drop throughout your app. Most people are familiar with drag and drop and they often try it everywhere.
It looks like it’s still a work in progress. Send feedback by tapping on the three dots, tap on Help and then Contact Omni. That will send an email direct to their support humans.
Out of curiosity, how did you determine that support for an intuitive way to reorder tasks, particularly for sequential projects and on an iPad, is a work in progress for Omni?
Sorry for the trouble! Drag-and-drop reordering is already meant to be a simple affair in OmniFocus. Is there a bug that I’m not aware of that is causing it to not work properly when you try to drag?
Here’s a quick screen recording of dragging an item in the tutorial project:
The basic process is this:
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Press-and-hold on the item to lift it and start the drag. When you long-press an item, you’ll see it start to lift out of the outline and at that point you can immediately start dragging it. (Apple makes this timing tricky. If you move too soon, the system will think you’re trying to scroll rather than drag. If you wait too long, the system presents the contextual menu. The good news is you can ignore the menu and drag anyway.)
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Drag to your target drop location in the outline. As you can see in the recording, the outline will give you constant feedback to help you understand what will happen if you drop at that specific location. If it opens up a gap between rows, it means that dropping at that position will move the dragged item between those rows. If it closes up that gap and highlights a single row instead, that means you’re dropping onto the row to move the item inside it (i.e. as an indented child).
So that’s how dragging to reorder is meant to work, and as I just showed in that recording it’s how it’s working for me. Does understanding the drop feedback (an open gap vs. highlighting a target row) help at all? Or are you running into a surprise behavior other than what I just described?
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