Export OmniFocus View to OmniOutliner

February 22, 2015

My Export View to OmniOutliner script makes a new OmniOutliner document from your current view in OmniFocus.

I’ve been meaning to share this handy little script for quite awhile now. Tim Stringer gave me the nudge I needed with his excellent work at Learn Omnifocus. Tim has a great new video tutorial (members only) on using FastScripts to quickly launch scripts to automate OmniFocus.

Installing the Script

To install the script, download the latest version here. Then in OmniFocus, choose Help → Open Scripts Folder. Drag the Export View to OmniOutliner file into the scripts folder. Finally, use Customize Toolbar to add the script to the toolbar in OmniFocus.

Running the Script

Once you’ve installed the script, navigate to whatever perspective you’d like to export. You can even Focus on a particular project, or use View Options (⇧⌘V) to fine tune the display. Once the view in OmniFocus is showing just what you want, run Export View to OmniOutliner from your OmniFocus toolbar. OmniOutliner will launch and the script will create a new document containing just the information in your current OmniFocus view.

Only the titles, notes, and structure are exported from OmniFocus. The OmniOutliner document won’t contain contexts or other information, like defer and due dates, from OmniFocus. I find this is a handy way to get a summary of a project or a task list into OmniOutliner. From there, I can print to PDF to share with others without exposing the details of my own OmniFocus database.

Share and enjoy!

Drop me a note @curtclifton on Twitter if there’s something else you’d like to see automated in OmniFocus.

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