Feature request: Ability to switch off 'no archiving' for individual projects

[Richard C]

At some point,  MLO implemented a feature whereby tasks under a Project would only be archived when the project was completed.   This has now been made optional at a file level.

I can see the sense of this no archiving rule: you want to be able see the full history for a project until that project is completed.   So I have this 'no archiving of projects' switched on.

However, I have some 'projects' which are 'ongoing'  - ie never end.   For example, I create a 'Project' for all my work contacts.  The reason for this that a) they are a 'project' in some sense;  and b) (more importantly),  I like the way in which MLO puts the name of the project before the task name in the ToDo lists.  This means I just need to type 'Phone' under the individual and the task then appears '[Joe Bloggs] - Phone.

But in these cases,  I still want archiving to operate.   So I would like the ability to selectively switch off the 'no archiving of sub-tasks' rule  for these 'ongoing' projects.

My proposal is this:  there is a 'Do not archive branch'  checkbox on the task properties (a little known feature - its on the Advanced menu for a Task).   This allows somebody to switch off archiving for an individual task which is not a project.   However, for a Project.  this checkbox is not ticked and I presume therefore has no effect (and is confusing because it does not reflect the fact that tasks will not be archived due it being a project).  

I would therefore suggest that when a task is made a project,   it sets this checkbox and when it turned back into an ordinary task, it unsets the checkbox.     And that users can change the setting of this checkbox themselves so that if I want one of my ongoing projects to still archive sub-tasks when they are completed, I just untick this box on the Properties dialog box.

Richard

[Dwight Arthur]

Hi Richard.  I like your idea of using contacts as projects to force MLO to show the contact name in the task listing. That's quite a good idea.

I also understand your proposal to change how the do-not-archive flag works in a branch with inhibited archiving.  It makes a lot of sense.

Here are two possible workarounds that might help, even if only temporarily.

1. You could change each of the projects that represents a contact into a folder. you might want to move all of these folders into a parent "contacts" folder.  You can get folder names encoded into task displays similar to the project encoding by tools> options> ToDoListFormat> TaskPath. Advantage of doing this is that archive will not be inhibited for these tasks.

2. You could leave the option for inhibiting archiving project and recurring tasks set  "off" allowing these subtasks to be archived and then set the archiving inhibited indicator for each branch that's an actual project or repeating task. I would normally discourage any setup that required this degree of manual intervention, as I know how often I tend to miss one.  But your proposal requires manually clearing the archive inhibitor for each project that's a contact, and the effort may not be so different.

I like your suggestion and it makes sense but I'm not sure it will have enough priority to be implemented all that quickly, these workarounds may help while you wait.
-Dwight
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