Creating a macOS Spotlight indexed archive of completed tasks and notes: Microsoft To Do via Outlook.com PDF

I like having local Spotlight indexed "standard" file format archives of completed tasks and calendar items. This is not a popular feature for most people so it's not widely supported. Today I found that this is possible with Microsoft To Do [1] (which replaced old Outlook Tasks).

Microsoft's free To Do.app for macOS has a web store that is shared with Outlook.com (and with Outlook for macOS, but I did not want to install that even though I have a 365 family account).

To Do has no print or archive facility. However Outlook.com does and it shares the To Do sync data. (I think Outlook.com is free for anyone who has a Microsoft ID.)

So:

1. Go to outlook.com and open task list (same Microsoft ID as To Do)
2. View All or Completed or whatever list and click ellipsis to see print
3. When Print choose to include notes. 

I get a multi-MB decently formatted PDF that Spotlight indexes for me.

In the general Outlook.com view has print capabilities the To Do app lacks.

[1] To Do is the only Microsoft product I routinely used. They bought it from somebody a decade or so ago. I could now switch to macOS Reminders but I find it oddly useful to keep Reminders as an aide to my declining short term memory and use To Do for small projects, shopping and so on. I put quite a bit of information in To Do notes and often find value in looking it up.

Migrating my microblog publishing from Pinboard to Raindrop.io

For the past 12 years, following the demise of Google Reader Social, I have used Pinboard (see also) as a core part of my obscure microblog commentary on Twitter, App.net, and Mastodon.  My posts have 3 fields: Title, Link, and Comment. On iOS I use the Pins.app Share Sheet for data entry, optionally edit in Pins.app, and the result is initially published in Pinboard. On the desktop I use a Pinboard bookmarklet to author and I edit in Pinboard.

IFTTT processes the Pinboard RSS feed and posts to my Mastodon instance (via web hook) and to my WordPress blog (kateva.org/sh). Although anyone can follow these posts via RSS from Pinboard or Mastodon or Kateva.org the small number who see them are likely following me on Mastodon. Mostly the posts are for Emily's interests and for my memory. I don't share them to my BlueSky account but I may do a future subset.

It's a kludgy and sometimes fragile workflow but I'm used to it. Alas Pinboard has been in decline for a year or so and around August 2024 it basically died. Maciej Cegłowski has since resurfaced but the service has been up and down and he's been generally unresponsive.

I have identified two replacements: micro.blog and raindrop.io. I chose Raindrop.io as most similar to my prior workflow but micro.blog is my next step.

Today I exported my pinboard content as a JSON feed (52K posts, of which the first few thousand were exports from Google Reader Social) and imported into Raindrop.io with good results. I signed up for the Raindrop.io monthly plan while I see what I can put together. I'll update this post with what I learn.

During this transition there will be some noisiness. Today I forgot to turn off my IFTTT feed and my raindrop.io import started generating kateva.org/sh entries that I had to remove. Eventually I'll remove the Pinboard content and close that account.

I'll update this post with what I learn.

Update 1/6/2025: Things are not looking good

Problems so far:

• Raindrop.io is deprecating RSS features in favor of an API approach and IFTTT integration. But the integration I want is buggy (can't handle URL even though it works with RSS integration) and the mastodon integration is only for one very large instance.
• Raindrop.io fetches a screenshot of the bookmark source to save as persistent artifact. It includes that in RSS as a img tag. For my purposes this is ugly noise in the post.
• Creating a Raindrop.io post from the desktop browser bookmarklet doesn't work well.

I've put in a support request to the Raindrop.io dev but I suspect I'll need to cancel my $3/m subscription. I'll revert back to Pinboard if it's functional again. Next will be a micro.blog evaluation and perhaps publishing in Mastodon with Linky/bookmarklet then using Mastodon RSS to create a kateva.org/sh archive entry.