OmniFocus & Date Stamps

Sat, 09 May 2009 16:12:23 -0400

I was in the middle of my Weekly Review and was wishing there was a way to instantly add a date stamp to my action items. I find dating items as I enter them helps to keep them from becoming perma-cruft. This is especially helpfull for staff requests and items classified as “Waiting For.” I looked through the menus and settings but didn’t find what I was looking for. A quick “Send Feedback” from the help menu and Omni’s excellent Support Ninjas sprung into action.

It turns out that OmniFocus does have this feature (but I still don’t see it advertized in the menus.) A simple [Command] [/] will enter the current date like so: 5/8/09. This was good, but not quite perfect. The way OmniFocus sorts by name causes issues with November (11) and December (12) showing up before February (2) - so I had been adding my dates like this: 05/08 to make it sort chronologically. I sent a thank you email to the Ninja and asked if Omni would consider changing how they sort Names / Numbers and when about my review.

I got a followup email later that day. Apparently this Ninja was talking about my request to somebody else and they were pointed to the International section of the System Preferences. OS X allows you customize the way the OS displays certain information, including dates. I customized the short format to have two digit months and days and I dropped the year. Now I’ve got my instant date stamp.

Thanks OmniGroup for your excellent products and support!

tech-geek.org

OmniFocus & Date Stamps