How do I delete tasks - esp a number of tasks at once?

idea
#1

Hello

How do I delete tasks? Particularly a number of tasks at once?

Whatever the answer is, sorry but it’s simply NOT easy enough.

I should explain I am a paying supporter of GTDNext but in term of use I am just dipping in. But this makes me useful to the community because unlike most of you here, I am not “too close” to it and I am still seeing GTDNext as a new/mainstream user does (rather than as an enthusiast/early adopter as).

I should also explain that Completion is different. Ticking as “completed” should be the normal thing, yes - but in practice about 20 to 30% of the things I have done I never want to see again, not ever. Put it into an archive if you must - sure good idea - but much like file deletion this should auto empty without fuss. And my newbie test data in particular I want to be able to get rid of without fuss.

The obvious things I tried:

  1. If I click on the white bit after the text and hit Delete key then the text from the item blow join me. OK this is unexpected but quite useful. Except that it only works if the item below is a peer not a child. If a child nothing happens.
    ==> No real complaints but still no solution.

  2. I tried shift/delete control/delete alt/delete but none of them do anything.
    ==> Starting to get frustrated.

  3. I tried right-clicking with the mouse. But nothing useful there.

  4. I tried shift-clicking so that I could select multiple tasks at once and then delete them. But you cant select more than one task at once it seems. (The selected mark up is still so pale that I can barely see it, btw!)

  5. I tried clicking on the tick box but that just makes the item “completed”
    ==> fair enough but still no solution

  6. Finally I tried clicking on the icon to the left of the tick box an hitting delete. The strange thing here was that clicking the icon put the cursor at the END of the text, and when I hit the Delete key, it deleted the FIRST letter.

Okay I give up

So what does MLO do. Whatever it is, is intuitive and obvious (MLO has other problems!). Let me see…

MLO has two very obvious modes:
a) Edit text mode
b) Row selected mode

Tick the row ==> the whole row is selected (goes pale blue)
Tick the text itself ==> and the text window thing appears around the text, and you can start editing text from exactly where you clicked.
In Row Selected mode hit F2 (like in Excel) and you are into Edit text mode
In Row Edit mode shift click another row and all rows are selected between the two points (just like an drowdown list in browser)
Or Control click lets you add more rows to being select individually (again just like standard browser dropdown lists…)
So how do you delete in MLO? And anything that ‘selected’ (and so is pale blue) when you hit the Delete key… is DELETED!

My point is that it is all easy, obvious & standard. Nothing for the new users to ‘learn’ !

Please can we have something similar in GTDNext !

If you want mainstream success you really need to absolutely minimize the learning curve of the UI.

Thanks

J

PS. BUT it may be that we should have an “are you sure” warning? Personally I dont see why but others may disagree. But if you do build such a thing I strongly suggest that it is dead easy to say yes using the keyboard. (e.g. Y for yes, and probably it defaults to the Yes button??)

#2

Hi @ship69 - Yeah, we don’t have batch editing features yet. Totally on the books to do it, but not a feature yet. Thanks for the feedback on ideas on how to do it.

#3

Hello I am re-visiting after a year of almost complete absence.
Is there any way to select multiple things at once and delete them?
In fact I am finding it pretty hard to delete anything at all. :^/

There is red the button bottom right but it only sometimes works…

I seem to have 3664 total items from a year ago. I cant’s see what the heck they all are, nor how to get rid of them!

Many thanks

J

EDIT: How do I delete an entire Area of Life?
The red X box doesn’t seem to do anything!

#4

HI Ship69 - welcome back and thanks for taking a look again.

No, there currently isn’t a method for selecting multiple items. One thing you could do is drag the items into one parent task and then delete the parent task. That would likely be faster than deleting all the items one by one.

To Delete an Area: Once you click the Red Box in the area menu you should see a pop up that asks you to confirm you want to delete the area. Just select “OK” and it will be deleted. NOTE: The tasks themselves will not be deleted. They will just no longer have an area associated with them.

#5

James

Thanks - that makes sense as far as it goes. Deletions does seem flakey/ unreliable, but I may be doing something wrong. More later on that.

Btw I now have another question. [should I start a new thread ??]
Is it possible to change the sort order of Areas in either the drop-down list and/or the buttons across the top of the screen?

It’s not a deal-breaker but I do find it frustrating to be forced to have them show up in the order in which I added them…

#6

That’s the first I’ve ever heard of that… It’s really a pretty simple process. You hit the delete button. They go away. There shouldn’t be any kind of flakeyness. Can you describe what you seeing?

#7

OK so trying to help… What was happening is that I would select a task, hit the delete button and absolutely nothing would happen. At first I put it down to a slow browser but I could do other things just fine.

However I have tried to duplicate my problems just now and deletions are working perfectly and instantly not matter what I do! Yes including from the lists view (e.g. Someday).

#8

Any news on this yet? Especially being able to assign a tag to several tasks at once would be really useful during processing/reviews.

1 Like