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milksync note separator clashes with outlook markup

(closed account) says:
i tried RTM/ milksync with years of outlook tasks, but needed to roll back and restore from backup. can you have a look at my questions, at the bottom of this post?

for a recurring task ('Recurrence pattern: Recur every ...', not 'Recurrence pattern: Regenerate new task ...'), outlook adds an empty line, and a line with '------------' (i.e. twelve minus characters, without the single quotes) to the top of the note when the task is completed.

i have several tasks like that in outlook. below is an example. every week, i add the week number and a one line note. because the task recurs, every new one has all the notes from previous weeks:

39: lorem ipsum dolor
------------
38: sit amet
------------
37: consectetur adipiscing elit
[...]

when milksync pushes this to RTM, note separation is triggered by the hyphens and in RTM (mac desktop), the top of the notes list for this task looks like this:

16: ut enim ad minim
31: nulla pariatur
35: eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore
[...]

(note that week numbers are out of order now. this happens because all separate notes have exactly the same time stamp, so their original order is lost.)

moreover, when this task syncs back to outlook, RTM also adds [note #][end note] tags around every - now - separate note.

at this point, my original note is damaged beyond repair and unreadable.

i have several questions:

1. can i choose a note separator other than '---'?

2. is it possible to disable conversion to separate notes? (it's not in 'Preferences...'. i don't need to collaborate on tasks through RTM.)

3. wouldn't it make more sense to start adding [note #][end note] tags if there's more than 1 task note?

4. is it possible to disable addition of [note #][end note] tags? (it's not in 'Preferences...'. i need ongoing synchronization with outlook, which supports one note only. this would keep my outlook notes 'clean'.)
Posted at 4:50pm on October 13, 2018
(closed account) says:
FYI: i searched my outlook task notes for three consecutive hyphens, and found 216 (completed and uncompleted) ones where '---' occurs at least once.

all of these would get damaged upon import in RTM.

most of them are recurring tasks where outlook added the hyphens on completion, like i described above. i can't change the marker outlook uses -- it's not a setting or preference.

i also found some other 'natural' uses of consecutive hyphens in my notes, that would trigger unwanted separation in RTM.

• output from a unix shell i copied to a note (outer double quotes added for clarity):

"$ gradle -version
------------------------------------------------------------
Gradle 4.6
------------------------------------------------------------
Build time: 2018-02-28 13:36:36 UTC
[...]"

• unix directory and file permissions i made note of:

"blab lab labla bla blablab drwxr-xr-x lablabl, blab lablablab drwx------ labl?"

"blab labla blablablab lablabl ablab lablabl -rwxrw----, abla -rw------- blab."

also note that it is not possible to sync everything to RTM, repair damaged notes there and be done with it. milksync will repeat the separation on every sync from outlook to RTM.

i really need a separator other than '---' if i'm going to use RTM with outlook, but would prefer it to not touch my notes at all.
Posted 5 years ago
andrewski (Remember The Milk) says:
Hi jeroenvg,
Thanks for your feedback about using MilkSync alongside the way that you use Outlook tasks + notes.

It's not possible to change or to customize the notes behavior or the separator with MilkSync, sorry.

Unfortunately I don't have any specific workarounds right now for your particular situation, but I've passed your feedback on to the development team for review.

Let us know if we can ever help with anything else!
Posted 5 years ago
(closed account) says:
any news from the dev peeps? what's the status on this? 'confirmed'? 'wontfix'?

i'd really like to start using RTM pro with milksync and outlook, or start looking for another solution.
Posted 5 years ago
andrewski (Remember The Milk) says:
I don't have an update from the development team currently, but I'll be sure to post any updates here if I have them.

In the meantime, if you wanted to change your notes to a different separator that would be the only workaround I could suggest currently. Sorry for any inconvenience there.
Posted 5 years ago
(closed account) says:
i'd want outlook to change to a different separator, but can't:

------------

...is just text it adds to the note of a recurring task, to mark the completion of one occurrence.

this would be solved if i could tell outlook to use some other marker, but that is not possible: the character it uses is not a setting (preference) in outlook.

(even if i would search and replace all minus-characters in my existing notes for something else -- before importing everything in RTM -- outlook would start adding them again later on.)

can you ask development? i think this shared use of '---' must be an oversight and not intentional.
Posted 5 years ago
This topic has now been closed automatically due to a lack of responses in the past 90 days.