Unable to add attachments

Hey there,
I’m using OF3 on iOS and it seems I can’t attach any other file besides photos or audio notes.
I would like to attach files like PDFs from my iCloud Drive but it seems imposible.
Is this a known issue in OF2/OF3?

Hey,

tl;dr me too.

I’m going to contact support. The problem I see is that PDF attachments added in OF2 on Mac are not appearing in OF3 on iPad. If I add text notes they sync. If I add a Word Doc (docx) that syncs (as an attachment).

This appears to be PDF specific.

Oh and I use omniserver for syncing. Not sure if you’re the same or using another syncing service.


Cheers
Dg

Hm… I just tried attaching a PDF to an Inbox item in the Mac app, then synced it to v3 and it seems to be working at least for me… Is an attachment icon appearing with the action on your iPhone or iPad after syncing? Also, does the item show up in the Attachments list in the Mac app? You can check that by navigating via the Menu bar along the top of the screen in OmniFocus 2 for Mac to Window > Attachment List.

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He is using OF3 for iOS not OF2 for Mac, your answer is orthogonal to his question: can you attach PDFs in OF3 for iOS?

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Read all the posts. @Kaia is responding to the post from @dgethings whose problem is precisely what she tested.

As far as I can remember, there has never been an ability to initiate attachment on IOS other than photos and voice recordings. You should, however, be able to access attachments made on the Mac.

So the upshot is that despite

  1. Apple has provided a file picker that is trivially easy to incorporate into an app

  2. Omnifocus already has a database and sync system that allows for adding and syncing file attachments

They have decided not to implement adding files directly on iOS.

Sounds to me like a ploy to coerce users to buy the Mac app.

Of course - it must be that. It couldn’t possibly be that they have other priorities and that this hasn’t got far enough up the list yet. It couldn’t possibly be that there are more technical obstacles than this “how hard can it be” opinion realises. It couldn’t possibly be because Omni have always warned that heavy use of attachments slows down sync and slow sync may create problems of its own. It could not possibly be because Omnifocus is not and was never built to be a full-scale file manager and devoting time and resource to making it one would be a distraction from focusing on task management.

No, none of these are possible. It can only be because those greedy fools at Omni want to coerce everyone into buying the Mac app. Well, they must be fools, because there are many more IOS licences sold than Mac licences and that means there are many people out there using the app without the Mac version. So their ever-so-clever master plan has obviously failed.

And of course, the competition does a much better job of handling attachments, doesn’t it. I mean, Things is great with attachments, isn’t it? Umm … no. What about 2Do? Umm … no. So they’re all part of this conspiracy. My God! It’s worse than we thought!

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Haha glad to see my tongue-in-cheek comment got the fanboys on fire.

The point re file size would make sense if the app didn’t allow attaching iOS photos which run 500-900 KB in most cases. Regardless, it should be trivial to restrict max upload size, and the sync is presumably transactional so it’s only uploading on changes subsequent to the initial upload.

Having said that, I’d agree that’s it’s preferable to just link to external content rather than chuck it in the database.

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There’s a rather awesome Workflow based solution described here:

which confirms that OF for iOS has this capability but the developers have opted not to expose it via the UI.

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Hi,

It seems that for some reason the workflow doesn’t want to work properly —at least for me— specifically when using the feature to attach a pdf to OF3 iOS through any of the following routes:

Airmail -> create pdf from e-mail -> workflow to OF3
Result: creates the item but without the attachment

Yoink -> share pdf to workflow -> does not even open OF3

PDF Expert document -> workflow to OF3 = as intended

But, if the attachment option is selected to the clipboard instead of the workflow input it works. However, it’s not convenient because it creates a duplicate in Yoink.

Any thoughts?