When I right click on multiple selected actions I get the option to sort based on Name but OmniFocus 4.2 doesn’t sort the actions. It works on projects and tags in the sidebar but not the actions themselves. I have to create a perspective which is redundant for my needs and I then have to sort in the perspective and drag the same actions back into the same project folder to have them get sorted. A rather silly workaround when back in OmniFocus 1 we could just simply click on column headers and choose what to sort on and adjust column widths. It was intuitive, simple, and fast like project reviews use to be in OmniFocus 1 on the iPad.
Besides the duplicate when using the quick open of names and the clutter of having unneeded perspectives I can not use the perspectives to nest actions inside each other. I can choose the option to “Preserve hierarchy” but that only seems to work if the hierarchy was created in the project itself so now I have to go between two different views to get what I need.
I have submitted a request for this to Omni but wondered if anyone else had any ideas or other workarounds. Always frustrating when you loose functionality to eye candy. I am guessing there is a reason we have never had this fuction brought back to OmniFocus but it seems like there would be more crys for this kind of quick sorting in projects and tags. Tags by the way doesn’t even give you the option to sort this way though you can manually move them up and down. Not sure why that is not an option.
This works for me in OF 4.2 in some perspectives but not all. It seems if the perspective structure is set to “flexible”, there is no option to sort. But if it is “organized”, I can select a number of tasks, then sort by something via the “Sort” context menu. However: there is a bug that doesn’t update the display until you deselect the tasks.
No idea why “Flexible” doesn’t work. Although, you can sort “Flexible” perspectives directly from the perspective definition—obviously this applies to the whole perspective, not what you selected.
Thank you for the response, I am really just trying to sort actions in the Projects and Tags view but the right click option doesn’t allow me to do that. However you helped me understand the issue below.
So after I press command+k (Organize Menu Clean Up) to they all sort. I am guessing it is so you don’t loose track of where you are and that this is there on purpose. That is very helpful and solves the problem.
@bumfuzzle My understanding of Flexible is the idea you can manually sort items on the perspective. That‘s why there‘s a Sort in the custom perspective‘s properties.
That said, I had cases in OF 4 before where manual sorting did not work. Because sorting is not so important to me I did not dig deeper into the topic.
