Is there a search that will search OmniFocus?
The menubar search returns no items, and the edit->find->find menu returns the same results, nothing.
It looks like it may find an item on the current page, but what use is that?
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@quadgrande - make sure either that you have no Contexts or Projects selected; or that - if you do - the item for which youâre searching is in one of those Contexts or Projects⌠Search does work - perfectly! Good luck :-)
Thanks for your reply, I think I understand how it works after playing around with it.
In my opinion it doesnât work at all. Itâs like google saying âmake sure you have no other websites open, and go ahead and navigate to the page you want. Then our search will find it.â
Thanks though
The Search term used in the toolbar allows you to find specific item(s) in a long list in the context of whatever view you are currently in which is useful in many workflows. While global search is a common feature request for OmniFocus, it doesnât currently exist. Please feel free to email a request for Global Search to our support humans at omnifocus@omnigroup.com to be sure your request is properly recorded for the team. :) I get what you are saying. I also am used to global search and I want it to work in that way where I can specify the scope too.
Still, we might be able to help you find a workaround to accomplish what you are trying to do for now using current views, or custom perspectives if you have the Pro version.
If you wish to elaborate some on what you are trying to accomplish, I might be able to make a more specific suggestion that would be more helpful. To see what most use as a workaroundâcheck out the support article at https://support.omnigroup.com/omnifocus-global-search-all-perspective/
Thanks for your response, I do appreciate it.
As far as elaborating what I would like, I would like to find tasks in OF using a search feature. Right now itâs a very limited search for a particular use case. Itâs not search. Change it to âSearch this pageâ and it would be more accurate. âSetup your view and perspective first, then be sure you only have it selected, and Iâll search that pageâ is what it seems to be. Fine if thatâs a long standing feature request. What amazes me more is it was released as a feature in the first place, with such confusing behavior.
OF has turned into a database into which you dump your information, and a set of queries to access that information (what Iâd call seeing a task list), you have to understand the entire layout and classification system of the application. You have to read user forums to determine the difference between ânext actionâ and âavailableâ. You have to understand the various views and how all of the attributes for a task go into constructing that view.
You can enter tasks all day long and watch them disappear into the app. Then you get to research how to pull them out again.
Itâs a struggle, and I do not have faith that the app will âshowâ me what I need to see at a particular time (which seems to be its goal, hide everything from you until you need to see it).
Itâs a second job. Thatâs one of the reasons iâd like to search for things. But I have to be on the right page, which means having the filters set up to display the info, then search will work. Find what you want, then search for it is the current method.
Instead I choose to use OmniOutliner to detail my daily tasks, because I canât get them easily out of OF. I go on an OF walkabout every morning for tasks to add to my ârealâ task list in OO.
Just my 2 cents, I realize your products are written for others as well who may value this complexity.
I used OmniGraffle because it was an easy to use alternative to Visio. Now it is Visio.
All of it highlights my frustration with OF and OmniGroup as a whole. Iâve been a user since OmniWeb was the best browser on OS X.
It could be just me, but in the end I miss the simple approaches that attracted me to OmniGroup. Thereâs not an app left really other than OO that retains its original simplicity.
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@quadgrande, may I respectfully suggest that - if you give OF a little more of a chance - its design and workflows (which have been thought out and refined amazingly carefully⌠over the years) will prove to meet most of your needs very well.
If I want to find an item, I simply search for it in the search bar at the top of the page, having first made sure that no Contexts and no Projects are selected (takes about 3 seconds). I always find it.
Unless, that is, I want to filter my search by a specific Project or Context. Works just as well there.
Additionally/alternatively, you could create a Perspective like this:
It will ensure that your search has no filters at all.
BTW, when you refer to tasks âdisappearingâ into the app, youâre actually describing whatâs meant by a âTrusted Systemâ: leave it to the software to do the work. Strongly suggest you give it a real try!
:-))
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We added global search to our OmniFocus iOS capabilities in the last version. While I donât know anything specific, I hope to see it on the Mac as well. It has been requested enough that there is a support article about it, so you are not alone in missing that feature.
Some serious thought is being given to ways to simplify the experience for those newer to OmniFocus while still preserving the deeper features that some of our most advanced users rely on. It continues to be a tricky balancing act to include all needed options, but remain approachable. Thank you for sharing more details about your experience, and you are not alone in these thoughts. The staff here does care and I hope that you will continue to let us know what we can do to improve usability.
I have been using OF 2.X for over a year now, and Iâve been using it off and on since it was a set of AppleScripts on top of OO.
Iâm just getting tired of struggling with it. I just brought OF up, Iâm showing Inbox, I clicked in several random areas that arenât a button or a selection to try and free up âselectingâ something - another difficult thing to do in the UI with all of its columns.
I typed âemcâ and it returned zero items. I probably have well over 1,000 tasks over this year with that string in them.
I also entered a new task today, and set a due date. I then wanted to make it a project, so I used the @ sign before typing a new project name.
It disappeared. Which translated means I donât know which buttons to press to show it again. I donât know where it is.
And Iâve had enough. If we have to have this conversation and back and forth to discuss the merits of search, and the procedure involved in generating a search for this product, the battle is already lost.
It will ensure that your search has no filters at all.
This is the opposite of search
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Not really: how else would you restrict the criteria for a search; thatâs what filters are for, as Iâm sure you know and agree. Removing filters means, âPlease search on everythingâ :-)
I see, a perspective on which to perform the search?
Maybe itâs (your) use of the preposition, âonâ, which is causing difficulties. Perspectives are filters are Views into the independently-existing data.
My âEverythingâ Perspective could be used specifically to include All states of availability - including completed and otherwise unavailable tasks.
What I do to perform the kind of search that I think you want is make sure that no Projects or Contexts are selected in the Sidebar.
That way my search is global in every respect except that it does exclude completed tasks and those otherwise unavailable because theyâre excluded anyway from those Perspectives by choice.
I am talking about the DeskTop version of OF 2 Pro, BTW!
Thanks for your suggestion and time @MarkSealey. I am using the desktop pro version as well, and Iâll set up what you suggested.
Search has brought to the fore my frustration with the struggle of using OF exclusively for time management.
Iâm trying to get away from using OO. I donât want to use two applications.
But I enjoy the freedom of looking at what I have chosen to do today (not what OF has a due date for today, or an item that just came off deferred ), and what Iâve done in days past, in a straight up fashion. I know I typed a task, itâs there, I see it where I put it, and checked as complete, and i did it on Thursday.
For example, what did I do last week? Common question, I can get that very quickly from OO. I couldnât tell you how to get that out of OF. I donât see any date filters for perspectives.
Iâve read GTD, researched GTD, followed Omni, watched their videos, I read lifehacker. Today I posted on the boards.
Iâm asking a somewhat existential and perhaps rhetorical questionâŚwhy do we do all of this? So you can write down what you have to do, and reference it later.
Seems a bit much to me at this point.
Please stick with it: I moved back to OF after trying all the other comparable s/w.
Itâs flexible: you can add a new Task without ever setting a date, Deferred or Due. Or assigning it a Context. Or even a Single Action Items Project.
Its strength for me is precisely that you can dump everything you have to do (my memory isnât what it was) and assign how, when, where or even whether you want/must/need/can do it at the same time.
I have a Waiting Perspective where every item is on hold.
Thatâs where perspectives will help: let them do the work, not you! Good luck :-)
Hereâs a breakdown of where I have an issue.
There are two types of data
Inbox
Not Inbox
Once an item is in the Inbox, the only filter is deferred or blocked. It will stay there, not too much to remember.
Once an item is out of the Inbox, you can only look for it with the following criteria:
Is it flagged?
Duration? Does anyone use this? Assumed itâs calculated on Estimated Time. See whatâs happening here?
Project Status - not task status - what if itâs not a project?
Task Availability - an OF term that I must interpret
Thatâs it, and search doesnât really help.
So I would conclude that you better know ahead of time what attributes to assign to a task in the Inbox before you change it, have a pretty good idea of where it will go once you do, and how to configure OF to display that âviewâ or you wonât know how to find it.
I presumed the goal was to simplify and remove the effort of worrying about tasks.
OF is making that goal a second career in task management.
I donât trust a system that makes it difficult to find the information Iâve entered into it.
Have you considered using contexts? It is a powerful way to sort your items, and you can apply a context to items in the Inbox as well.
Most people use Contexts to solve the issue you mention here. It might not solve every thing, because keep in mind, you have to pick one context and only one, but they are heirarchical and you can select them discontinuously in the sidebar to get exactly the selection you want on the fly. Check out this video at https://learnomnifocus.com/tutorials/omnifocus-2-mac-using-contexts/ if it sounds like it might help.
Give that a try and see what you think. Good luck!
Thanks Mark, that perspective was really helpful.
Thanks for posting about this. Itâs been a struggle for me also and I completely agree that the âsearchâ field at the top of the window should simply be a global search. I see tasks disappear after I edit them and then really struggle to find them too.
However I have found the search perspective that @MarkSealey posted in this thread to be a decent workaround. And the iOS search works nicely.
Very welcome, Peter!
Whenever I try to find a task that I just edited, I visit the âChangedâ perspective. That will show me what I just changed. Then I can verify the changes I made or correct it.
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