Using the view bar to filter and arrange items
The view bar is a powerful way to filter and rearrange the items in your window. It has one pop-up menu to control what appears in the sidebar, and five pop-up menus to control what appears in the main outline. The various filters work together, so that you can come up with quite expressive combinations of settings, like Flagged next actions in active projects, that I can do in less than 15 minutes, sorted by due date.
When you find yourself using a certain set of contexts, focus, and view bar filters pretty often, you might want to save them as a perspective.
Project Filter 
This appears above the sidebar in planning mode; click it to choose what kind of projects to show in the sidebar. You’ll probably want this to be Active most of the time, so you can see only the projects you’re working on now. You can also choose Remaining (projects that haven’t been completed or dropped), Stalled (projects without any available actions), Pending (projects with start dates in the future), On Hold, Dropped, Completed (projects you have marked with these statuses), or All.
Context Filter 
This appears above the sidebar in context mode; click it to choose what kind of contexts to show in the sidebar. You can choose Remaining (contexts which haven’t been dropped), Active (contexts that have actions assigned to them), Stalled (contexts without any actions), On Hold (contexts you’ve indicated should not allow their actions to become available), or All.
Grouping 
Click this to choose how to group the projects in the Planning view outline, or the actions in the Context view outline. You can Ungroup everything, or group by Folder (for the same structure as you see in the sidebar), Due date, Start date, Completed date, Next Review date, Added date, or Changed date. Each group shows up as a collapsible bar in the main outline. Remember that in Planning view, the grouping applies to whole projects, not to the individual actions inside them.
Sorting 
Click this to choose how to order the projects in the Planning view outline, or the actions in the Context view outline. If you have a grouping selected, the sorting happens inside the groups but the groups themselves stay in the same order.
In planning mode, you can leave projects Unsorted, or sort them by Name, whether they are Flagged, their Due dates, Start dates, Completed dates, Next Review dates, Added dates, or Changed dates.
In context mode, you can sort individual actions by the order of the Project they belong to, whether they are Flagged, their Due dates, Start dates, Completed dates, Added dates, Changed dates, or their Time estimates.
Action Filter 
Click this to choose what kind of actions show in the main outline. You can choose to see actions with Any Status, Next actions (just the next thing to do in each eligible project), Available actions (things you can actually do, because they aren’t blocked by earlier actions in a sequential project), Remaining actions (anything that’s not completed), or Completed actions (things you’ve already done).
Estimated Time Filter 
Click this to show actions whose time estimates fall within a certain range. You can choose to find All actions (regardless of their time estimates), or actions that are estimated to take less than 5 minutes, less than 15 minutes, less than 30 minutes, less than 1 hour, more than 1 hour, or an Unknown amount of time (for actions you haven’t estimated).
Flag Filter 
Click this to show projects or actions based on whether they have flags set on them. You can choose to see items with Any Flag State, Flagged items, or Unflagged items. Note that flagging an action puts a kind of ghost flag on its parent project, making the project count as flagged too, and flagging a project ghost-flags all of its contained actions.