Export and append to existing file... is that possible?

[Nova]

Hello,

since I'm using CN as my "todo" list file, I'd like a feature to "delete" done tasks, but keeping track of them.
In particular, I'd like a feature to export notes (as the "export current view", present), but appending the notes to the file, rather than replacing it. This way, I could select all notes with tag "done", and export (append) it to the file Done_tasks.txt

Is this possible?
Thanks in advance,
Marco

[Mark S.]

I use tags to handle that kind of thing, without the complication of a separate file.

All the things that are today's list are marked with TODO (actually I use "0", but I digress). As things are done, they are marked "DONE". A negative filter (scratched out DONE) hides them. At the end of the day, for things that are DONE for all time I remove the DONE and TODO tags, and mark with an archive TAG. If I ever want to see a list of all things I've done for all time I just look at the contents of the ARCHIVE tag.

For things that are done today but will need to be addressed again tomorrow, I just remove "DONE". Tomorrow, when I review the TODO items, there they will be! For things that are on the list day after day for which I want a simple audit trail, I may open the note and append a date. Helps me to remember when the last was that I recharged the cell phone or watered the philodenrons.

Mark

[Nova]

Thank you for your reply.

Your proposed workflow is interesting, indeed.
I was just wondering if there is a way to avoid this way of "ever-growing" database, exporting the list of "done + archived" notes into another file (database, text, whatever fits)...

Thanks, again, for your suggestion

[CintaNotes Developer]

Hi Marco,

thanks for your question!

At the moment, the best way to approach this task woud be:
1) Create a new notebook called e.g. "archive.db" using the File/New command
2) In your main notebook, cut all notes marked as "done" to clipboard with Ctrl+X (= click on 'done', Ctrl+A, Ctrl+X)
3) Switch to archive.db and paste the notes with Ctrl+V
4) Switch back to cintanotes.db

Unfortunately at the moment it can't be automated further.
But if you have a Personal License, switching between notebooks is really easy with the File menu MRU list.
Otherwise you'd have to use the File/Open command every time.

[Mark S.]

I was just wondering if there is a way to avoid this way of "ever-growing" database, exporting the list of "done + archived" notes into another file (database, text, whatever fits)...

With tag filtering, there really isn't an "ever growing" database problem. Most todo items are likely to be less than 100 characters long. CN doesn't show signs of slowing until about 10MB. So if you were a workaholic generating and archiving a 100 TODOs every day it would take about 500 days before you would feel the need to archive (10,000,000/(2*100*100)=500; assuming UTF-16).

The advantage of keeping them all in the same file is that you can quickly compare new and old events, and re-use (by copy/paste) archived tasks when they come around again.

Have fun,
Mark

[Nova]

Thank you both for the replies. I'm really enyoing CN right now.