How best to hide some tasks from main summary

[JP]

I've been using MLO for a month now and I am not sure how to best hide certain projects and task while still be able to specifically search their context. For example: I have "Books" and "TV Shows" projects. Books has authors I want to read and all their books are listed, those I have and do not yet have. The context is set as @Get, @Have and @Library, @AmazonKindle. TV Shows I watch on the elliptical and have all the shows and their episodes listed as well as shows I want to get...

...This is where my problem starts, Active items and next actions are a mess with all these entries and important entries and actual tasks can get over looked. If I "Hide the branch", when I go to the library or Amazon looking for a book or TV shows, nothing is displayed when "Hide the branch" is set. Remembering to unhide a branch is not always possible, e.g. the other day I was doing some grocery shopping for myself and picking up a few things for my parents. Items for me, I added to my folder, items for my parents went to their folder. Each grocery item has a @GroceryStore context so I can just display @GroceryStore on my Android phone and do my shopping. Some items weren't showing up and that is when I discovered "Hide the Branch" not only hides them from Active Actions, Project, Next Action, etc but also hides them when you look up their context. 

I was wondering if any of you have come up with your own method on handling something similar? 

Joe

[Dwight Arthur]

On Tuesday, November 4, 2014 1:51:44 AM UTC-5, JP wrote:

I've been using MLO for a month now and I am not sure how to best hide certain projects and task while still be able to specifically search their context. . .

Joe, here is how I would handle your situation: I would declare contexts like @Get, @Have, etc to be always closed. (see below for instructions on how to do this). Then, carefully think through which of your views should *include* the items with closed contexts (like a >Library view) and which views should *exclude* them (like a >NextAction view). If a task has more than one context, like @Get and @Grocery it will show up in both places - if @Get is hidden by reason of being closed that will not prevent the task from being displayed among the @Grocery items. 

Details:

to mark a context "always closed" hit F8 to bring up the "Manage Contexts" popup. Find a context in the left pane and highlight it. In the right pane confirm that the selected context name is shown at the top and then click on the Hours tab. click the AlwaysClosed button and then the Close button at the bottom. To reverse the effect follow the same procedure but hit the "Always Open" button instead. 

To exclude closed contexts from a view, ensure that the view details pane is showing at the left of your screen. (If it's not, hit alt/f1 to bring it up). Ensure that the pane says "Views" at the top. (If it has a view name, click the view name to bring back the list of views). Find a view you want to configure (like >Library, or create one if necessary) and click it to bring up the view definition. Find a section named Contexts and click to expand it. At the end of the Contexts section see a checkbox called "include closed" - check it to include your closed contexts, clear the checkbox to exclude them.

-Dwight