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Actions disappearing? Everything you ever wanted to know about this bug (except how to fix it)!
I’ve been reading about some problems where actions disappear seemingly randomly. Luckily (and also unfortunately) I’ve had this problem many times and so I decided to investigate exactly what was going on. The good news is that it’s not random, and it’s not that hard of an issue to avoid. Also, if it was random it’d be very difficult for Ethan to fix.
I also heard that for some people, pasting to a new document fixed the problem. I tried this and it doesn’t work (at least not for me, but I’d wager that it doesn’t actually work for anyone). I don’t know why it seems to work for some people, but my guess is simply that when copying stuff over, they somehow eliminated some of the criteria for action deletion. If it worked for you, try making a set of actions/projects with the criteria listed below, and I bet you’ll see the bug rear it’s ugly head once again.
Anyway, on to the actual criteria and how to avoid the problem.
The problem only comes to light when you create a project or subproject with a start date in the future. I’ve seen people mention this once or twice here, but actually it’s not quite that simple. First of all the issue doesn’t appear immediately; it’s not until the second sync after the creation of an action, that it could disappear.
I’ve determined that only unfinished actions, with a context, and without a start date in the future will vanish. That means any item without a start date, or with a past start date. Priority and due date settings don’t seem to matter either. Also, any action meeting this criteria will always be deleted after two syncs.
From my limited troubleshooting it does appear that giving your actions start dates in the future will prevent them from being deleted. Be aware though, that while giving an action a start date in the future that is sooner than that of the project will protect it, there will come a day when it’s start date is past and the project’s is still in the future; at that point it will vanish!
The simplest ways to avoid this issue are the following:
- Do not give projects or subprojects start dates (duh!).
- Do not give actions of projects or subprojects with start dates any context.
- Always make sure that actions of projects or subprojects with start dates have startdates even farther in the future.
- Pester Ethan until he fixes the issue!
Hopefully this will save some of you some serious heartache over lost actions.
P.S. From my extended (but still rather limited) troubleshooting, I have found that neither iCal nor backup settings seem to affect this bug.
P.S.S If anyone else can discover any way to fix this bug (maybe some preference setting) please post here. The more information we can give Ethan, the more he can narrow down the possibilities, and the faster he’ll be able to fix it.
Wow, I just checked, and
Wow, I just checked, and there it is. What a nicely isolated bug!
One simple fix would be to
One simple fix would be to add a line in the sync script that eliminates start dates from projects and sub-projects.
Nik, I emailed Ethan about
Nik, I emailed Ethan about that as a possible temporary fix. Eventually I’d like the ability to use a start date for a project/subproject and not have any start dates for it’s children actions. Its a much faster way to keep things off of your iCal to do list, especially when all those actions need to happen on a single day.
Nice piece of work you did
Nice piece of work you did specifying this bug. From your data I was able to track thru the Sync script to see how the tasks disappear:
There’s a record of what tasks were in the Actions list on the last sync,which is used to recognize when an action has been deleted from the Actions list since the last sync.
On the first sync after a future start date is set on a project, the actions that have contexts are included in that record, but later in the processing they are determined to be inactive because project’s start date is still in the future. Since they’re inactive, they are excluded from the Actions list.
On the second Sync, those actions are found in the record of actions from the last sync, and are absent from the Actions in the current file, so they are treated as if they have been deleted from the Actions list and are therefore deleted from the Projects list.
So there’s no preference that will workaround this bug. The script will have to change. What was you expectation when you marked a project with a start date? Was this just a way to have all of the project’s tasks be inactive until the project start date?
That was my main goal.
That was my main goal. Sometimes I have projects I can’t start on at all until a certain date. Rather than have to set all actions to have a start date, it’s nice to be able leave them without one. Otherwise, every action turns green when the start date comes up. Again this isn’t a huge deal, but sometimes it’s nice to be able to differentiate between an action that happens on a certain day, and and action that just needs to happen sometime soon. For the most part it’s not a huge inconvenience, but it does bug me a bit.
By the way, great job tracking down the exact problem with the script. Hopefully Ethan will see this and it’ll make it a lot easier for him to fix the script.
Just for the record, I have
Just for the record, I have had the ‘disappearing actions’ problem too and have only just started using Kinkless after upgrading to Tiger.
In fact, my actions seem to be disappearing without any start dates at all. There were dates in the column, but i took them out.
I’ll be keeping an eye on this page…
OMG - thought we had a great
OMG - thought we had a great program , loved the way that it works, but today ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE, 28 of 47 projects turned gray, and all of the listed actions for those projects are gone.
We went to the back up got lucky redid them all and saved and the when i went to look at the projects they were gone again and so were all the actions.
and the back up was shot to hell, no projects.
We used no dates , no future dates, we also noticed that the projects that turned gray were also deleted from the Projects column text box.
something is wrong, terribly wrong, and we paid a huge price today. It was sweet while it lasted but no one seem to be adressing the issue, .
i hoped this cleverly
i hoped this cleverly identified bug would match mine, but removing all dates (i had only a few) didn’t solve my problem: the sync still deletes incomplete actions.
The problem wouldn’t stop
The problem wouldn’t stop happening for me, including across stopping & restarting iCal and OmniOutliner Pro.
Then I removed all start dates and promoted sub-tasks to be regular tasks; I flattened the hierarchy so there are only Projects (from Project view) and tasks. This stopped the actions from continuing to disappear.
I just upgraded to 10.4.7
I just upgraded to 10.4.7 and it’s been working fine. In 10.4.6 it acting very strange and I had all the same problems you guys are talking about. hopefully it’s fixed now (?)
The real comment I wanted to leave is that I’ve started to make MANUAL backups and not rely on the automatic backup. It seems that when my original file was doing something weird that same thing was happening in the automatic backup as well. So I save a copy to another folder once or twice a day just to make sure I don’t lose all the info (My whole life is in this file!!). Good Luck…
I just updated a week or so
I just updated a week or so ago and about 15 actions disappeared just yesterday. How can this be an efficient system of tracking what I have to get done if it forgets more items than I do?
Unfortunately, the date
Unfortunately, the date function (be it ‘start date’ or ‘due date’) appears to be seriously flawed.
I’ve now turned off both date columns in the “KGTD Settings” section.
Kinkless is of absolutely no use to me if I cannot trust it 100%. With all dates turned off, I think I’m up to about 90%, but find I’m still holding my breath whenever I sync…
Shame… But shows what problems ‘feature creep’ can cause.
d.
I’ve just experienced this
I’ve just experienced this problem today. What is the deal? Has Ethan (or anyone else, for that matter) indicated a fix for this?
I have to say that I’m in the same camp as the last few commenters, in that if this problem isn’t addressed (and soon, in my case) I’ll simply abandon Kinkless for another solution— though I haven’t found one that is as elegant in implementation.
Maybe Thinking Rock or ActionTastic (or Inbox, if they can get it together into a working app…)… any other suggestions?
Hi Ed, Sounds pretty
Hi Ed, Sounds pretty frustrating. What is it you actually want kGTD to do with dates?
I ask because none of the programs you propose to switch to do anything with either start dates or due dates, or with posting todos to iCal, so maybe I’m misinterpreting what you want.
I’m looking for something
I’m looking for something iCal-integrated, and that has definable dates— completion dates are must-haves, but start dates are helpful, since they prevent tasks from showing up until a defined date (at least ostensibly as Kinkless has them defined).
I might have what I want in EasyTask— has anyone given it a look? Also, Thinking Rock has some iCal integration, though I haven’t played around with it enough to know how much.
Thanks for pointing out
Thanks for pointing out EasyTask Manager. Looks more useful than most of the other options to kGTD.
Thinking Rock has something that kGTD lacks: the ability to post a task to iCal as an all-day event, useful for things that have to happen on a particular day. I’ve been using the CreateiCalEvent script with a QS trigger to approximate that. But I think it should be automatically handled by setting a context in the Projects list.
OK, it serves me right for
OK, it serves me right for not reading all the feedback here after being away. Still, I’m about to pull my hair out. In anticipation of the OmniFocus wonderapp, I sidled back up to kinkless. I revived and updated the items in an OOP document with the latest kGTD build.
To clear the decks a little, I manually moved half a dozen or so not-right-this-second projects and their children out of the active projects list and into the Deferred folder. None of the projects or children had start dates, though most or all of the children did have a context assigned.
Two days later, I check the Deferred folder, thinking I’d move some of those deferred items back into active status. The primary project title remains for most of them - without any of the children. No sub-projects, no next-action items. All the outlining and future work action gone. A quick check of the backup files reveals that the children had been moved successfully. They just died and disappeared at some point during the two days that followed.
Now the mechanism behind this huge waste of time appears - bravo for the fine detective work! You’ve at least saved us all that step. I’ve used OOP and kGTD through a number of iterations. I’m a fan. I’m looking forward to OF. But if I can’t rely on kGTD / OOP to at very least not kill my hardwon data in a move from folder to folder, it’s going to be a much longer wait for the beta OF than I’d anticipated.
Right now I’m going to rescue all the data from the manual backups and migrate the whole shabang to non-kGTD OOP and re-group.
lastgasp, Unfortunately
lastgasp, Unfortunately Deferred doesn’t work the way you were expecting.
Deferred is a place that contexts that have a “+” appended to their name are moved from the Actions list. So things that are placed there by you are treated by the Sync script as new actions, and the code doesn’t know what to do with what appear to it to be sub-actions.
You can defer whole projects by appending a pound sign “#” to the project name, and the code will just ignore that project when processing actions from the projects into the contexts.
If you decide to use kGTD, you’ll want to look at the FAQs.
Paul, thanks for the note.
Paul, thanks for the note. Wnen I first set up kGTD (several iterations ago), I did go through the training video and some of the ad hoc documentation. I confess that I did not remember that the + suffix and the “Deferred” folder were intertwined.
Maybe it’s me, but I didn’t have much luck following your suggestion to me and others to look at the FAQs. I clicked on the FAQs link you provided; it took me to the main page. The user guide there covers installation and QuickSilver, but not the actual set-up and use of the kGTD scripts. There’s a reference to a videos page, but near as I can tell there’s onely one movie available (by clicking on the “kGTD Intro” button).
I watched the movie again and didn’t see any reference to the “Deferred” folder. If there are other user documents and resources that I’m missing, including a specifc FAQ page, please point me in that direction. Based on the main post above, my kGTD set up would have caused the actions to disappear regardless of whether I’d moved the projects into Deferred. I appreciate all the troubleshooting work Ethan and the community at large have done on kGTD. I do hope all the collective knowledge, far-flung as it is through this forum, makes it into the OmniFocus development process.
UPDATE: Perhaps this is the link you’d intended? http://wiki.43folders.com/index.php/Kinkless_FAQs
I keep losing action items
I keep losing action items too. For me it’s always with recurring items. Is this the same glitch as the start date fault?
The start date glitch is
The start date glitch is only when someone tries to set a start date on the name of a project or subproject, so your problem is different, unless you are trying to set recurring on a project or sub-project name.
Your recurring task will probably have a future start date when it is set, which will mean it isn’t actionable and that it will not show up in the context it is assigned to until you sync on the start date. An task with a future start date will still be the Projects list, with an inactive (gray) style.
Otherwise, check the FAQs to see if you are setting the recurring item properly.
Thanks Paul - I think I have
Thanks Paul - I think I have figured it out. I am syncing iCal with my powerbook, and I think this may have confused kgtd. Not positive about this, but it seems like this is the cause. I have stopped syncing and we will see what happens. Thanks again,
David
I was so hoping this
I was so hoping this wouldn’t happen to me, but alas, I have been struck. Suddenly, most of my open actions have moved themselves into the archives. I was horrified, then glad when I found them lurking in the archives. So I tried to drag them from the archives back to their project homes and the next tme I open Kinkless, they have scurried back to the Archives.
I don’t use start and stop dates, so I know that is not the problem.
The WHOLE POINT of GTD is that you have to have a sytem you TRUST. I can no longer trust Kinkless. After a whole weekend of trying all the recommended fixes, I have given up and been testing ThinkingRock, Frictionless, and EasyTask among others. I even downloaded the upgrade to my old Life Balance program to see if it had been improved. It looks like I’ll probably be going with ThinkingRock for now.
I can not express how sad this makes me. Not just that I lost a weekend on this, but I really really liked Kinkless. I am juggling many projects and have (had) hundreds of actions. Kinkless was working well for months and then it went crazy. And from the research I did online, I am clearly not alone in this. I know it’s my own fault for using Beta Software on critical real life applications. Sigh. Sorry for the rambling.
Peace and good luck.
I came acros kGTD last week
I came acros kGTD last week and was excited too. But like many others I also keep losing tasks. In my case it had nothing to do with dates at all. I added some contexts, renamed one, and after the next Sync whole projects where empty. I also came across a situation where kGTD Sync had added whole sub-projects underneath a previously simple task.
So, I can only repeat what has been said above: The WHOLE POINT of GTD is that you have to have a sytem you TRUST. I can no longer trust Kinkless. Too bad!! It seemed like such a great idea and the close connection to OmniGroup made me really hope for the same stability.
But until this issue is addressed, I cannot continue to use kGTD… :-(
Sigh…
shit. i spent a week
shit.
i spent a week getting my life organised, getting things out of my head into this system and BAM. 3/4 of it gone…. This is MAJOR! get it sorted, take it down or warn people about it… a freakin trap. ahhhhh!
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