OmniFocus HowTo: Printing to 3x5 cards

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by Brian on December 11, 2007

Got another question from a customer which I thought other folks might be interested in, so up on the blog it goes!

Q: Has there been any progress on index card printing? I've been checking through the New Features lists with each releases, but I haven't seen anything relevant. Have I missed something? It would be really great if I could print to index cards nicely.

A: You can do this, but it's not something that we mentioned in the feature list. What you want to do is set up a custom paper size, then tell OmniFocus to use that paper size when printing.

(This assumes your printer supports printing to 3x5 cards, of course.)

To set up a custom paper size, do the following:

Open OmniFocus

Select File -> Page Setup

In the Paper Size pop-up menu, select “Manage Custom Sizes”.

In the window that appears, press the plus-sign button in the lower left.

Double-click the new item that appears in the left column, and rename it to “3x5 Notecard”.

On the right side of the page, set the page width to 5 inches, and the page height to 3 inches.

Adjust the printer margins to taste, or leave them on the default values.

Press the Okay button to close the window and save your custom paper size.

You'll now be taken back to the page setup sheet in OmniFocus. Again, assuming your printer supports printing to 3x5 cards, you can now select your custom paper size in the “Paper Size” pop-up. Press the Okay button.

Do a test print (or preview), adjust to taste, and you're all set to take your OmniFocus info with you all pocket-sized.

Comments

This is fantastic. Does anyone have experience with small desktop printers that support printing to 3x5 cards? Merlin reviewed the Pixma iP3000 Photo Printer on 43 Folders, but a photo printer seems like it would be expensive to keep filled with ink.

dansays

12.11.07 8:20 AM

Some comments regarding (3x5) printing- since you blogged about it (it was going to hit the beta email list otherwise)...

Current choice of column size does not appear to make sense. There is too much space reserved in various areas around the card (right hand side and bottom). There is currently no manner to change the viewed columns or size of columns in the print out version.

To give you an idea of the problems- print an 8.5x11 sheet, or larger- fonts shouldn't grow past 12 points, and there's no reason to have so much space- think space-saving.

Choosing scaling function in page setup does not appear to seriously influence the column widths, often one scales in order to increase the amount on a single line, not just get more lines on the page. [Try longer names for tasks and you'll see what I mean.]

No option for separate context lists on separate 3x5 cards.

You might consider having XML and CSS sheets for printing- the engine is there in the program… you could setup advanced printing preferences via CSS sheets, and share them with friends, etc. [just an idea]

Also, for space-savings, perhaps having a vertical text spanning the contexts on the left hand side (rotated 90 degrees to the rest of the page), and then highlight the list by way of a color-bar at the left edge. This would enable very quick flipping through 3x5 cards and determination of the context without need for a large line and spaces wasted in the print out. (See hipster PDA color-coding of card-edge with Sharpie markers for an example.)

Yes, currently you can print to 3x5, but there's not much control over the view, column width, data density etc. I'm hoping it gets better before the release…

But, I'm very thankful it's there at least rudimentarily. I was beginning to wonder if you were waiting for everything else to be done before playing with printing!

[Also spacing options in row spacing and column spacing in the normal program would be wonderful. A style selection similar to omnioutliner (for same-level of tasks in folders) would be helpful for altering some of this, perhaps- but perhaps not perfectly appropriate…]

a11en

12.11.07 3:16 PM

Thanks A11en - I'm opening a new feature request on improved 3x5 card printing, and attaching your feedback. I think we're winding down the new feature adds for the 1.0 release, but I'll make sure we don't lose track of these suggestions for a future build of the app.

brian

12.12.07 4:20 AM

Hey Brian,

I felt bad about putting all that on the blog, honestly, and so please feel free to remove it if you like. It may just be my own tasks that don't really show up very well on the 3x5 card… but the data-density is kinda poor, so it makes using 3x5's not very easy… and I was surprised to see full-page print-outs not working also. Would love to have more printing support if possible. But, to be honest, I don't know how many people print this stuff out… it's the old Hi-Fi/Lo-Fi debate/question. :) Having any printing at all, I'm grateful for!!

Omnifocus is awesome! Keep up the excellent work! It's no wonder you guys got so many pre-purchasers so quickly. Hat's off to you guys.

-Allen

a11en

12.12.07 12:59 PM

a11en - no worries, and no need to delete the comments. It's all feedback. ;-)

In any case - full page printing *should* be working. Can you give us a little more detail on the problems you're having?

brian

12.13.07 4:02 AM

Team Member

A11en said: “Yes, currently you can print to 3×5, but there’s not much control over the view, column width, data density etc.”

You can control which columns to print and how wide they should be by setting them up the way you want in your view first. Once you've done this, you can save that layout in a Perspective (along with your page layout settings), giving you one-click printing of 3x5 cards (if you follow the tip from Brian's earlier post).

Ken Case

12.13.07 4:56 AM

Holy Crap. So I create a perspective with a paper type of 3x5 cards and a Scale of 120% to make it a bit more readable, and voila, I've got literally two click printing of my on the go to-do list onto index cards.

The killer bit being that the Perspective saves the Page Setup options.

A11en, does adjusting the Scale help you with your data density issue?

I sincerely hope you've got somebody writing a user manual. The power OF is pretty freaky.

Craig

12.17.07 2:18 AM

testing testing 123

brian

01.08.08 5:48 AM

Ummm, damn, I invested in an iphone, can't I sync to an OmniFocus webapp or something, these little cards, they're soooo 1950.

Zimzim

01.08.08 12:25 PM

zimzim, we'd like to support the iPhone with a native application, but we won't be able to make any plans until Apple releases the SDK next month.

We did do some work on a web app, but setting it up proved to be more challenging than a lot of folks wanted to deal with, so we stopped work on that front. Some of our users have picked that work up and are continuing it, though; check our forums for more info.

brian

01.09.08 6:58 AM

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