Stray notes

TaskPaper
1

Hi all!

I’m have this problem with stray notes. I regularly find notes or pieces of notes in my taskpaper file, orphaned from their parent task. I think they come from tasks that have been deleted or archived, but I’m not certain. Sometimes I am not able identify what task they belonged with. I have not been able to figure out what I’m doing that causes this, and therefore don’t know how to prevent it. Anyone else have this problem or have an idea of what I’m doing?

-DW

2

Sorry I’m not sure… I don’t know of any bugs that would cause this.

Do you use filtered/folded views often? I think when views are filtered folded you might be deleting a non hidden item, but the hidden children might not be selected… so they show up again after the filter is cleared.

1 Like
3

Thanks, @jessegrosjean. That could be it. The behavior of “Delete Items” is not what I expected. It seems to delete a line. My expectation was that it would delete the item with its children, or at least with its notes.

4

Remember, of course, that a TaskPaper document is a tab-indented outline.

Notes and items that don’t have an additional tab-indent are not children or notes of the preceding line – they are simply following siblings.

Taking an example from:

https://guide.taskpaper.com/getting-started/

This would not be a parent with children (just a series of 4 siblings):

Groceries:
- Eggs
- Lettuce
- Milk @priority(1)

Only tab-indented items are children:

Groceries:
    - Eggs
    - Lettuce
    - Milk @priority(1)
2 Likes
5

Yes, @complexpoint, I understand the difference between the two examples. However, Delete Items treats them the same: it gives the same result when called on the first line in either example. This is not what I would have expected.

In the first example, I’d expect Delete Item to delete only “Groceries:” In the second example, I’d expect Delete Item to delete “Groceries:” and the three tasks underneath it.

6

“Delete Items” is equivalent to selecting the current line and then pressing delete.

Simple… except when an item has hidden children (ie it’s folded) then when you fully select the line those children are also considered to be selected… and so the children are also deleted.

So the rule is if you place cursor on an item that also has children and “Delete Items”

  1. Only the item will be deleted if children are visible.
  2. Children will also be deleted if children are folded.

I agree it’s an odd case. :frowning:

7

Sorry for adding to this old thread, but in trying to troubleshoot a similar problem, this is what I’ve discovered.

Find a project in the project list in the sidebar that has no tasks.
Go to the project name after colon.
Hit enter and type - to start a task
Type the task

The task will be visible under the project in the “Home” view but not if you click on the project in the sidebar because it’s not actually part of the project.

If you move the project in the sidebar, the task locates under the project above.

The fix is to hit tab either before or after typing the - which will make the task part of the project.

Sorry if this is trivially obvious to everyone but I thought it was interesting enough to post here for future reference.

1 Like
8

Oh. I realize now this thread was about notes and not tasks but the same behavior also is true for notes.

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9

You are not the first to be confused by this. The issue and design is discussed here in this screencast:

https://www.taskpaper.com/guide/screencasts/

1 Like