Sorting by Due or Start Date Not Working?

Anna_123 · August 31, 2014, 4:15pm

Hi all,

I am working on my weekly review and I wish to organize all my tasks per project according to due dates.

Here’s what I have:

Project Filter: Remaining
Grouping: Next Review
Sorting: Due
Availability Filter: Remaining
Status Filter: Any Status
Estimated Time: Any Duration

When I change the sorting to start date or to due date, it has no effect. At least it does not seem to have any effect. Your suggestions and insights will be appreciated.

Anna_123 · August 31, 2014, 4:21pm

Actually, I just realized that the sorting is per project not within the projects.

timstringer · September 1, 2014, 3:07pm

On a related note, you can select items within a project and use the Sort Once feature to sort by due date (and other criteria). As the name implies, this sort only happens once (i.e. it doesn’t permanently change the sort order of the project).

If you find you’re using this feature a lot, it helps to assign a keyboard shortcut by opening up System Preferences and selecting the “Keyboard” panel, clicking the “Shortcuts” tab and clicking “App Shortcuts”. For example, I’ve assigned the keyboard short ⌘ + ⇧ + D to “By Defer Date”.

I hope this helps…

Anna_123 · September 1, 2014, 7:12pm

Hmm, I think this is a feature in OF2. I have OF1 on my mac and PF2 on my iPhone.

Is there a way I can do this kind of sorting by start or due date within a project in OF1?

Here’s what I do so far, and it’s not working: I go to all my projects, I click on a specific one. Here’s how they are organized:
Project Filter: All Projects
Grouping: Folder
Sorting: Unsorted
Availability Filter: Remaining
Status Filter: Any Status
Estimated Time Filter: Any Duration

When I click on a specific project, and go to sort by start or due date, the order of the to do items does not change.

I can probably do the grouping by due or start date, but I do want to have a sense of the chronological order of each to do item within a project.

Hope it makes sense.

timstringer · September 1, 2014, 8:09pm

The “Sort Once” functionality is available in OmniFocus 1 as well. There isn’t currently a way to specify the sorting within projects in either OmniFocus 1 or OmniFocus 2…so this is the best option at the moment.

Anna_123 · September 2, 2014, 2:25am

This is totally cool! It’s not called Sort Once in OF1 but I found the option and am already set with my shortcuts. Thanks!

timstringer · September 3, 2014, 7:07pm

You’re very welcome! And you’re right…it’s not called “Sort Once” in OmniFocus 1. The Omni Group changed the name of this submenu in OmniFocus 2 to make its functionality more obvious.

Anna_123 · September 30, 2014, 4:57am

Two more questions:

Is there a way for me to use a shortcut to sort tasks according to the time commitment they require without creating a new perspective? I am in my Flagged perspective and have actions from different projects each with different time commitment. When I am in the Flagged perspective and click on any of my perspectives, I want to start working on the task which will take the longest time. I am hoping someone can tell me of a keyboard shortcut method like the one discussed above.
The shortcut to organize actions according to their due or start date seems to work only if the actions are from the same project. For instance, if I go to my ‘reading’ context, I see many reading tasks from different projects. I do not seem to be able to organize them chronologically with the shortcut. Any tips on how I might do this?

I have OF 1 on my Mac and OF2 on my iphone.