Someone help me understand why this won't parse

[Joel Azaria]

"Follow up again w EF Mutton re ABC salesmanism.  discuss sales processes .. lits, materiels, levels of qualification & sale and or PM work, as they grow, what is needed" -due on 10/4/15

For some reason I cannot determine, MLO refuses to see the -due switch.  I originally had other switches too (-reminder, -start) but removed them to narrow it down. (i also changed the names of the innocent to protect the guilty.  It doesnt' parse)

Does anyone see a problem with this line?

J.

[pottster]

Hi Joel,

I reckon it's because you have enabled the setting in Tools>Options>General Application Options>Rapid Task Entry dialog>Place additional text in task note if text entered is greater than...

What's happening is that MLO is pushing the text greater than this limit (including your parsing switch) into the Notes column without further action.

Your choices are: -

1. Increase the limit in this setting
2. De-activate the setting
3. Be more succinct!

Good luck.

[Joel Azaria]

Thanks  Pottster.  That "fixed' it for now but this is a rather defective behavior if I understand it.

The text limit is somewhat arbitrary and I don't see that as an excuse for MLO ignoring it's own switches.  Especially as that is the format that MLO help dictates:  switches at the end of the entry.

I see no way to denote separately/manually what is supposed to be a note and so it seems either I have to

• have the limit set arbitrarily  high to make sure my switches are parsed (and basically prevent anything from ever being entered into the Note field
  
• lose the ability to use parsing or deal with questionable/flaky parsing behaviors.

Am I missing something or is does this really need to be fixed?

For the record this issue has bothered me for many many many moons and I just 'worked around' it manually.  That it's hidden in this way (the RTE results box shows the whole item as a 'note' regardless of it it actually is one or not so you can't tell) is both silly and frustrating.

[BOC]

I agree this appears to be programmed correctly but inconsistent from a user experience and should be considered a 'bug'.  MLO should first look for switches then parse the data into the note, not vice versa (ignoring the switch).

i.e. A user has two different results if they do the following:

1. Paste the text below in RTE having excess characters parsed as notes checked
2. Operating in the outline hit <insert>[paste/type text] hit <alt><enter>
   

Follow up again w EF Mutton re ABC salesmanism.  discuss sales processes .. lits, materiels, levels of qualification & sale and or PM work, as they grow, what is needed 10/4/15