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Task managers as general information managers
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Posted by MadaboutDana
Feb 10, 2016 at 03:33 PM
Following on from my musings under Remember The Milk (RTM), I’ve copied over my last post to a new topic:
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Stimulated by my last thought, I’ve just had a quick sniff at Todoist again (must get back to work, really!), and yes, it could indeed by used as a fairly powerful outliner.
The only downside is exporting data - not easy from Todoist (you can print pages, which means you can output PDFs if you prefer, and it automatically takes backups, but there’s no other output option as far as I can tell).
On the plus side: the quick search automatically searches notes; you can set up sophisticated filters, and it uses tags (“Labels” in Todoist-speak). In short, a very useful info management app, with basic support for Markdown, although I’m not sure I’d want to use it for handling huge amounts of data (having said which, I’ve happily copied pages of minutes into comments in the past).
Definitely worth a closer look!
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And while messing briefly with Todoist during my lunch hour, I find that it has a very useful extra feature. In order to print a Todoist page, it has to go back to the Todoist server and generate a web page - which appears in Safari. You can print it or cancel the printing dialog if you wish, but you will still have a full HTML page to play with if you want it. Even better, Todoist offers you the option of outputting any notes/comments as part of the page. So I output a couple of tasks, one with an extensive comment (multiple paragraphs with headers etc.), and this appeared in full as a web page - all nicely formatted, with all text visible.
This means Todoist could in fact function as an authoring system, albeit a rather idiosyncratic one.
Fascinating!
Posted by MadaboutDana
Feb 10, 2016 at 03:42 PM
Even better, the web page thus generated preserves the folding/unfolding behaviour of Todoist itself, so each parent task has a little arrow next to it. So you generate complete, folding outlines from Todoist effortlessly. And if you precede tasks with an asterisk *, the checkbox is no longer displayed. Wow.
However, if you try to save the web page, you realise that what you’re actually seeing is a slice from the actual logged-in web app; while you can save it, it will then try to reestablish contact with the Todoist server every time you open the saved page, resulting in error messages. If you save it as a web archive, it will try to print itself every time you open it. So for long-lasting archival, you need to PDF it, losing the folding functionality.
Posted by Ken
Feb 10, 2016 at 04:21 PM
Hi Bill,
A couple of quick thoughts. First, have you had a look at the most recent recent version of My Life Organized? donleone recommended it to me, and it is quite a powerful piece of software. I like that you can customize the views and sorting, and that the features that you do not use do not get in the way. I like it and Right Note, but for true task management (with the ability to sort and filter), MLO is quite the package. I continue to use Todoist for personal tasks as it best fits my work style, but it just did not cut it wor work. Take a look at either or both if you want an information manager that functions a bit like a task manager.
—Ken
Posted by Andrew Mckay
Feb 10, 2016 at 06:15 PM
thanks , I didnt know the printing and caneling method and I will be trying it out more
I use Todoist for my task management but I am always looking for ways to export to word so it often need to generate small reports from my projects/tasks
I can use this extension in Chrome Save Webpage As Word Document to download in word. It requires some clean up work as expected but is a massive improvement on my other efforts
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/save-webpage-as-word-docu/mcebgdgbcbdkgdljffnkkbekldnidbmn
Posted by MadaboutDana
Feb 10, 2016 at 09:23 PM
Hi Ken,
Thanks for the tip, and indeed, I keep a close eye on MLO - but alas, they haven’t released a Mac version yet. They’re thinking about it, however…
Andrew,
Thanks for the Chrome extension link - that does look interesting. In fact, it looks brilliant. I install all Chrome extensions on Opera (with the help of a cunning Opera extension!), and they usually work fine. I hope this one does, too!
Cheers,
Bill