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Query for tasks due in the past with a range

derekh4 says:
I am coming over from Toodledo and looking to replicate their saved search features in Smart Lists. I can't seem to figure out the syntax for searching for date ranges in the past. Essentially I want to see all the things that were due in the last week or last 2 days so I can reschedule them. The "overdue" list is really large so I don't want just that. I use the "due 2 days ago" the most since I work way past midnight often so "due yesterday" is not useful because it flips over at midnight.

How can I get the query to do a date range in the past? I have tried things like:

due date --- is after ---- 7 days ago .... but this still adds 7 days to today
due date --- is within -- "-7" -- days of "today" ... but this complains that I need to enter a number instead of "-7"

Anyone have a solution to this?
Posted at 4:11am on June 14, 2021
(closed account) says:
I have this issue where I setup a "Stale Tasks" list to show me all the tasks
- that I haven't touched in 2 weeks and
- that are overdue by 2 weeks or more.

The first item was easy: NOT updatedWithin:"2 weeks of today".
The second item, which I believe is what you're looking for, cannot be done (unless that option has been added within the last few months) without hard-coding a date. Since I only check that list weekly, it's an easy thing to just set the date to 2 weeks prior to today, but for your needs, that would become cumbersome very quickly.

Mine looks like this if I were to run it today:
list:{whatever your active list is} NOT updatedWithin:"2 weeks of today" NOT dueAfter:31May21

I hope this helps some. Perhaps the option to search for due dates in the past will become a thing someday. Besides this, however, I love RTM and it serves me very well.

Maybe others have other ideas on how to get around this issue.
Posted 2 years ago
andrewski (Remember The Milk) says:
Hi derekh4,
Yes, geojono is right that this isn't possible in Remember The Milk currently. We apologize for the inconvenience!

Those are the workarounds I would think to mention too, but let us know if we can help with anything else!
Posted 2 years ago
derekh4 says:
Thanks for the quick replies, some interesting ideas there. This will be a difficult thing to work around. I really like the RTM features and interface but I live in the "past" for my work. Basically everything in the "future" is just "sleeping" until it becomes "active" and shows up on my "overdue" list. 90% of my tasks are recurring and can't be done ahead of time (financial invoices, monthly admin tasks, etc.). At the end of the week I triage and figure out what should be pushed into the next week and what can linger in the "overdue" bucket. I can try playing with the startDate and dueDate fields with a set separation so queries will pick up the right window.
Posted 2 years ago
martingchapman says:
Have you tried grouping the Overdue task list by due date? This will separate your overdue tasks into blocks of tasks all with the same due date. You can then scroll to the period of time you are interested in and re-schedule those tasks as appropriate.
Not a fix as such but maybe a workaround.
Posted 2 years ago
This topic has now been closed automatically due to a lack of responses in the past 90 days.