Usability issue: Text searches are not cancelled between Perspective switches

I have a number of perspectives set up to search for the initials of colleagues in tasks (e.g. (AB)). So clicking on my ‘AB’ Perspective tab in the side bar shows all remaining tasks that include the text “(AB)”. When I have a meeting / phone call / Skype conversation with AB, I can click on to this Perspective and see all tasks that involve them (e.g. “Discuss project X finance meeting agenda with (AB)”.)
I have such ‘text search’ based Perspectives set up for about half a dozen people that I mostly work with.

So far so good. The problem I’m having is that switching to a different Perspective tab from one of these ‘People’ Perspectives does not currently remove the text search criteria. So for example switching from my ‘AB’ Perspective to the ‘Projects’ Perspective only shows the projects and actions that include the text “(AB)” — the text search criteria persists across the switch to the ‘Projects’ Perspective.

This means that I have to manually mouse my cursor into the text search field at the top of the OF window, and manually delete the content from the search field using the keyboard. This seems the only way for the ‘Projects’ (or whatever) Perspective to work properly after I have used one of my ‘People’ Perspectives! I find this to be rather a pain in the arse!

Is this a bug? I cannot see how this could be called a feature… But if it is, please could you allow users to turn it off! Ideally, I’d like the text field to be automatically cleared by the act of clicking on another ‘tab’ in the Perspectives sidebar.

Thanks for any help with this.

2 Likes

If bug, or feature (by design), I don’t know, but it annoys me a bit, as well.
My auggestion for you is to report the issue to Omni (Help>Contact Omni in the app), as email is the only official way for both aupport and feature requests.

Thanks for your input. As suggested, I’ve now logged the issue with Omni.

A

1 Like

I believe this behavior (letting the search persist) is intentional, but anyone that would like to have the option of clearing it when switching perspectives should do as @ediventurin suggests and let us know via email at omnifocus@omnigroup.com so we can add to the feature request and weigh it against the other ones in the system. Thanks!

Anyone aware of a work-around for this? I am a new user to OmniFocus, and this makes the use of a Perspective that relies on a Search unpalatable. I was using it to search for my boss’s name in entries, so that I can gather all such entries in one place regardless of Project. (And the plan is to do this for other specific contacts; it sounds like the OP’s aim is something similar.) My current work-around is to create sub-contexts under the Office context for each person.

This has been fixed in the latest test builds of OmniFocus 2.0.4.