Another Dustin here, and I second the proposal for listContains. Granted, wildcard search would be even better, but this would suffice for me :)

--Dustin Selman

Great idea!
I wanna this too.

Totally agree. I assumed this existed and its absence is very time consuming...

this operator would be a significant upgrade!
+1

+1 here - listContains would make a lot of people happy.

Yes, this would be very nice!

This has my vote!

Please. Please. Please add this functionality. This will make RTM work for me (look at all the pro account holders above!)

Thanks

+1

Please. Need it badly.

+1

This would be a godsend

Not to suggest this is not a valid request, but as a workaround... if you rely on smartlists generated via tag, as opposed to plain old lists, then you can use the tagcontains search to accomplish just what you want listcontains to do, can't you?

Can we add this much needed listcontains? Please?

listContains: would be dope. here is another hard-hitting example of why. i have different lists for tracking paperwork tasks that need to be signed by clients, returned to me, sent to my corporate office, action confirmed . . . i.e. lists include "tracking - to send","tracking - sent / to confirm receipt" . . . and on. i enjoy promoting a task, perhaps a little toooo much, from one tracking stage to the next. of course, starting each list w/ the word "tracking" keeps these sub-categorical lists adjacent on my home page. if i could search by "listContains: tracking", i could print all tracking lists on one page (presumably with their full-list names showing as they do now with other searches). an aside to RTM: it's not a stretch to say that you helped save my life. thank you.

+1 for listContains - needed particularly when you moonlight or work with many businesses and prefix your projects with business name like so:

List 1 Name - "ABC Co: Project A"
List 2 Name - "ABC Co: Project B"
List 3 Name - "XYZ Co: Project A"

Would be awesome to then search via listContains: "ABC Co" AND tag:na so it could find all Next Actions associated for all lists for "ABC Co".

+1

+1

+1
I'm was using Things (GTD app for MacOS X). Things is really cool, but has two annoying (for me) things: you can not create scheduled tasks within project (only in special section named "Scheduled"), nor you can differentiate "next action" list by context. I mean when I'm at work i don't need to see my "home" tasks. So it is good for me to create two smart lists named na-Work and na-Home, to see only tasks that actual for current context (work or home). I'm using RTM first week and it's a pity that there no filter like listContains, therefore I need to mark all tags related to Work with tag "work", to filter them appropriately. It's terrible inconvenience and waste of time. Implement "listContains" and I became a RTM user Pro same day!

@bloodymonster - You do know there’s a tagContains operator, right?

It's also possible to filter for lists, where the list is another smart list.

@ranbarton, thx for your advice.
In another words, you suggest me to tag every task in my "work" lists with tag "work", for "home" lists with "home", etc? IMHO, it's just waste of time, every time when I'm adding new task I need to set these tags. It's also not comfortable for me (see basics of GTD)
And another one thing. What will be if I forget to set tag? I'll miss this task in my work/home/etc "next action" list. To prevent this I need to look through all my tasks every day, to make sure I don't have tasks which are untagged. IMHO, such behavior is unacceptable for Trusted System

I got the same suggestion (use tags) from the RTM team some time ago.

But I'm in the "+ 1" category; I'd really like listContains for exactly the reason the topic starter posted!

You can use the ability of smartlists to automatically add properties when adding tasks to a smartlist. You can use checklists that flag tasks that lack a necessary attribute. You can use the abilities of features of RTM, as they exist, and try to get things done, or you can decide they do not wrk for you, and use some other system to get things done.

I have used a solution like this for years. It takes next to no effort, nothing falls through the cracks, and I was attempting to help you configure the same thing, as you had asked for improvements.

+1
would be excellent. I have a list per project for work..each project starts with a 'z', so want to see all my work by using 'listcontains:z'

@ranbarton. Thanks again for your help. I really appreciate it.
It's good idea to use smart lists to automatically add tags to tasks created in them. But in this case I need to do 2 things every time I add a task:
1. I need to create task in SmartList kinda "tag:work", so my tasks will be marked with tag "work"
2. Drop this task to appropriate project (because my next-action-work-list contains tasks from different work-projects.

OR I need to create smart lists to each of my projects, like "list:wk-Project1 AND tag:work", and when I create a task in such list it will be marked with tag "work" and placed in appropriate project list.
May be I complicate the issue, and you did mean more simple approach. Anyway I have solved this issue by more simple and convenient way (for me). Will post it soon

Thanks for your attention

Ok, as I promised, my way to solve issue with listContains. May be my approach will not be suitable for you, but I am using it for 2 weeks already and I can say, that it is goood for me )
I created several smart lists where I enumerated all my projects for corresponding areas:
AllOfWork = "(list:wk-MyProject1 OR list:wk-MyProject2) OR location:@Work"

AllOfHome = "(list:pr-MyProject1 OR list:pr-MyProject2) OR location:@Home"

etc.

There and below prefix "pr" means it is private area, "wk" - my work area, na - means "next action", see GTD guide from the first post of this topic.

And then I modified my "next action" lists, for example:
na-Work = "(tag:na OR dueWithin:"1 week from today") AND list:AllOfWork"

na-Home = "(tag:na OR dueWithin:"1 week from today") AND list:AllOfHome"

My grounds is that I create new projects not so often as a tasks inside them, so it's not so hard to update corresponding lists when adding new project. It's also comfortable to do weekly review for any area, because you can see all you task for specified area at once.

Oh, I am a pro user now! )) I completely lived Things (Mac app for GTD I used before). But I am still hoping that RTM team will add listContains filter soon.

One correction to my previous post. It's better to use dueBefore"1 week from today" instead of dueWithin. Doing so you will not miss "overdue" tasks.

I'm using a solution very similar to the bloody monster, but I find that this somehow makes it mentally even harder to define something as a project... (updating an AllOf... list is yet another action to perform to create a new project, which should be really simple) Not very GTD-ish I'm afraid :(

Therefore I really hope that we do get listContains soon, which should be fairly easy to implement (far more easy then a new mobile client as suggested in the current user survey...) and still is consistent with the other search operators.

+1 on this as well. Not having a "listContains" search operator is killing my ability to make a clean status report for all of my work-related projects.

+1

+1

I'm not sure if we're crowdsourcing/voting here but I absolutely really REALLY need a listContains: operator and I find it hard to believe it's not already there. I also find it hard to believe that it would be the least bit difficult to add, but then again, I don't know anything about the backend of the software.

I just hope that this makes it in soon because I'm finding myself forced to either re-do my entire system on RTM, or defect to something else.

+1 from me. Not having a "listContains" search operator is something that is lacking and would be appreciated.

Gareth

+1
starting to use RTM extensively, but really am missing this one!

+1
one more that could really use this feature!

+1

Would really like this, given that I sort of group my lists as individual projects by widescale subject area. Not an actual example, but they're like:

"Health - Hump Removal"
"Health - Teeth Straightening"
"Health - Ending Habit of Saying 'Yes Master' to Everything"

Well, if I had a listContains: operator, I could have a SmartList that would be listContains:"Health" - and thus could be a master list for all items in that widescale macroproject.

Signed,
Igor

+1

+1
Would love this.

I definitely would love this for exactly the same reason that dustinblack mentioned at the start of this. I do agree, we could potentially work around this by dumping all the non-Inbox lists into one big list and then use tags and tagContains, but that makes it quite a bit more difficult to do nice, neat things like archive a project list when you want to move the project to "Someday/Maybe" without losing all the to-dos you previously brainstormed. Currently, using that GTD system, it's a real pain to find all the priority 1 things in the personal category since I have to do something like:

priority:1 and (list:psl or list:psl-insurance or list:psl-anniversary)

And of course, if I later add a project, the Smartlist that's hard-coded like this won't update itself unless I happen to think to fix its search parameters after adding the new project list. By way of contrast, this search really should be easy to do with something like:

priority:1 and listContains:psl

So yes, this would be great. Please!

I want "listContains: operator" too.

+1

Add me on as a +1 for this.

My current dilemma is filtering out certain lists (like dinner planning, shopping, and travel planning) that don't necessarily pertain to my ongoing day-today activities. If I could include a specific character in their names (such as "Dinners+ , Shopping+, etc.) then I could simply filter out any list that has "+" in the name.

In the mean time, my solution is to create a smart list that includes items from all these lists, which I can then filter out of other searches using the NOT list: operator.

+1

+1

+1 - I use multiple lists to define various projects that I work on, that way it helps me review and brainstorm a specific project then smartlists I use to span the multiple lists for my GTD tags. However, I split my work and personal lists by a prefix and would love to be able to aggregate all Work and all Personal tasks regardless of GTD tags by using a simple "listContains:" syntax.

+1 please

+1 please, please, please

+1 useful for GTD

+1 . Addition of this feature would make GTD so much easier in RTM, and would not complicate the interface. I would upgrade to pro for it.

+1

+1

As Dustin Selman already said: support for wildcards in searches also realises this goal and even more!

So I think it's better to (also) vote on:
Support for wildcards in searches
http://www.rememberthemilk.com/forums/ideas/2871/

Another good functionality to vote on is:
Support for regular expressions in searches
http://www.rememberthemilk.com/forums/ideas/6981/

That's even more powerful than wildcards! (But maybe also too difficult for some users?)

+1

+1

yes, that's a very helpful feature, please add it!

+1

+1

Please please please? It's been over 3 years since the request...

yah.. up. UP!

Yes, I need this feature more than any other! I want to have a smart list that gives me an overview of my GTD lists that all start with the same word.

I know it's been a very long time since this was suggested and there are workarounds with tags and smart lists but I thought I would add another +1. RTM is about using simple features to build personalized systems for each user.

+1 from me. Am worried that tasks are dropping through the cracks because I haven't tagged them correctly - this would let me see what tasks don't appear in my smart lists.

+1

+1. Absolutely need it.

+1 from me.
I have a few work-list. something like: wk-project1, wk-project2, wk-project3.
Some tasks are tagged as "wait", because I'm waiting for input from someone.
I want to have all of these tasks in a smart-list with search-condition: listcontains:wk and tag:wait
A solution would be to tag all tasks as "work" (then I could use tagcontains), but this would ruin the overview of tags, because all tasks have the work-tag.

That would be soooo useful!
+1 from me

+1, this should be easy to implement - 3 years since the original request and no comment from RTM? Love to get some feedback here.

+1 -- the single biggest impediment to using RTM to implement GTD easily. While it's lovely to be able to create as many lists as you want, it's a lot less helpful if you can't easily define subsets of them ...

+1, and using this for GTD like all the other guys. The only way round I found was to tag each item with 'work'

+1

Definitely the feature I would most like to see implemented. It's the only thing that's missing for me. +1

I was redirected here from a feature request I posted on the contact form. Close to everything said here also applies to me.

Hmm... yes! +1

+2 - I asked for this too, I almost missed some really important things. RTM makes everything in my life happen now, please make it happen RTM!

+1.

+1

+2 same here, I say we need this for proper GTD inspired smart-lists in RTM.
Why is this not programmed in after nearly 4 years. It's not rocket science!

+2 This is really needed! Tagging all work-related tasks to make things appear on one list is too much work when it could have been achieved through this simple search operator.

+10

Need this for smart GTD list

+1 While we can create the same thing with tags or query string the listContains: operator would definitely save time and reduce errors. RTM, we're ready!

+10

+2 here. This will definitely streamline my workflow further. Love the suggestion

+1

+1

+2 here as well! I would love such a feature. In case you did not notice, this feature does currently work in the Android app!

+1 - I'm about going mad trying to write a manual workaround in Excel using the concatenate function. Would be much easier if I could create a "group" based on a Prefix - job done !

Another GTD user who would love this to be added.

Would love to see this as well! +1