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Smart list exclusion

ascrichton says:
Sorry if I missed something on the forums... Looked around and didn't see anything quite like what I am looking for.

I made a Smart List for All Tasks (dueBefore:today OR dueWithin:"1 week of today" OR due:never) which limits it to showing me things past due, due within the coming week, or things that don't have a set due date. This is so that I can see what is current/upcoming at a glance without it being cluttered with far-away things I don't need to think about yet.

However, I want to incorporate my "cleaning system" into RTM. For years, I have had a weekly list on the fridge or noteboard of which room to thoroughly clean on any given day of the week. A simple rotation of tagged (#cleaning) repeating tasks (Sunday Laundry, Monday Bedroom, Tues Bathroom, Wed Kitchen, Thursday Living Room, Friday Desks and Brush Pets, Sat Kitchen again) just gives me something to focus on. Silly, yes, but hey, it works. :)

Going along the theme of keeping my All Tasks tab clutter free, I want to exclude all of these cleaning duties that are more than a day or two out. I've tried to make a composite search term

dueBefore:today OR dueWithin:"1 week of today" OR due:never AND (tag:cleaning NOT dueAfter:"2 days from today")

and messed around with the format-- NOT (tag:cleaning AND dueAfter:"2 days from today")

(NOT tag:cleaning AND dueAfter:"2 days from today")

and other ways of trying to force it to exclude those cleaning tagged items that are more then 2 days out, but to no avail. The dueWithin:"1 week of today" always overrides the 'NOT' /excluded search terms. Anybody have an idea of what I'm doing wrong, or is it simply not possible to have conflicting search terms?
Posted at 11:42pm on March 13, 2010
raymond.bergmark Power Poster says:
You need two parts in your search:
For non-cleaning tasks: NOT tag:cleaning AND (dueBefore:today OR dueWithin:"1 week of today" OR due:never)
For cleaning tasks: tag:cleaning AND NOT dueAfter:"2 days from today"

Combine the two:
(NOT tag:cleaning AND (dueBefore:today OR dueWithin:"1 week of today" OR due:never)) OR (tag:cleaning AND NOT dueAfter:"2 days from today")
Posted 14 years ago
andrewski (Remember The Milk) says:
I think that dueBefore:today OR (dueWithin:"1 week of today" NOT (tag:cleaning AND dueWithin:"2 days from today")) OR due:never should work the way you want.

You could also use the sleeper tags' method of creating a separate list that contains excluded tasks. Then you'd just add NOT list:Later to your Smart List.
Posted 14 years ago
ascrichton says:
Thank you!
Posted 14 years ago
This topic has now been closed automatically due to a lack of responses in the past 90 days.