Displaying a calendar quickly?

[terrypin]

How would I setup my PPC so that, from a powered-off state, I can get to a plain 6 or 12 month calendar in the minimum number of button presses and stylus taps please? I have Pocket Informant, so have also posted in the PI Forum, but it may be that the PO Calendar can do it more quickly?

I want to be able to answer questions like my wife asked me last night: "What day is Boxing Day this year?" It took me rather longer than I'd liked. Few occasions have arisen so far to dispel her unspoken but obvious impression that this is an expensive toy, and I'd have liked to rattle off the answer say 5 seconds later <g>.

Newcomer to PPC, using iPAQ 2210 (PPC 2003).

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Terry, West Sussex, UK

[rhmorrison]

How would I setup my PPC so that, from a powered-off state, I can get to a plain 6 or 12 month calendar in the minimum number of button presses and stylus taps please? I have Pocket Informant...
I'm not sure why you need a 6 (or 12) month calander view. In order to obtain your info for Boxing Day (a holiday) I would make sure that the System PIM shortcuts are set to PI first. You do this by clicking on the PI menu - Advanced - and checking the 'Override System PIM Shortcuts' (assuming you haven't already done this). When changed you will have to soft reset the device. Then to solve your Boxing Day problem you could do the following:
Press the Calendar button on your PDA which will turn on the device and jump to the PI Calander Press the Calander options button and select Holidays Scroll down until you see "Boxing Day"
As one of many alternatives you could:
Press the Calendar button on your PDA which will turn on the device and jump to the PI Calander Press the Search button and enter "Bo" and select "Boxing" from the selection list Press the search button and you see a list of Boxing Day holidays (and maybe more)
I think the search method is the better way to accomplish such things (especially if you have NO IDEA when "Boxing Day" occurs).

I am in the process myself of deciding if I want to buy DateLens, PI, or AF and right now I am leaning heavily towards PI because it has the most functionality. A good portion of what DateLens does is included in the Month View as an option, and otherwise it has more configuration options and views than AF (although it is also a very fine and powerful program).

[terrypin]

Thanks Bob. I'll try those suggestions. But, maybe I'm being over-ambitious, I was hoping I could set things up so that 2 or at most 3 button presses (ideally same button, pressed successively) would give me a plain old calendar.

'Boxing Day' was just an example. It could be anything:
'What day is 1st Feb next year?'
'Does next month start on a Friday?' etc

And typically having found answer, ther are often follow-up questions.
'What date is the Friday after that?'
'How about the following month?'
'When did it fall last year?' etc

All can be easily answered by a glance at a calendar - maybe needing to page forward or backward once.

IOW, how can a PPC approach the speed of pulling one of the old paper diaries from your pocket and opening it at the Year Calendar?

=================================

I've since found I can do it if I set Pocket Outlook's Calendar program to year view (5th icon along), and assign a button to Calendar. Of course, that does take up to 5 successive button presses (from power off), but at least it's robust and a no-brainer.

Can anyone do better please?

Newcomer to PPC, using iPAQ 2210 (PPC 2003).

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Terry, West Sussex, UK

[Kati Compton]

There's a few Today plugins that let you display a 1-2 month calendar. I think at least one of them has little arrows that let you scroll through the list. But that could be even more taps depending on how far you want to look from the current day.

I'd give you names, but my PPC has had a hard reset, and I haven't had time to recover yet.

[Video11]

If you are using Deje's free today screen plugin PI Today for Pocket Informant then tapping on the calendar icon on the very left hand side will pop up the PI 6 month calendar.

You can find PI Today in the forums at PI.

[rhmorrison]

'Boxing Day' was just an example. It could be anything:
'What day is 1st Feb next year?'
'Does next month start on a Friday?' etc
You can't expect to have the same best solution for differnt questions. With a paper calander you have no other choice, you page through the thing one month at a time which for questions such as when is boxing day is not a good method. You should not try to use a PocketPC calander in exactly the same way as a paper calender, use it for what it does best, displaying just what you want without you having to search for something. For example, by making appropriate uses of categories you can then see only items that are in a particular category. Or you could search for the next time you are to meet with Joe Blow, etc. The most efficient way to make use of a computer is normally not to emulate the same methods that you would use when you are not computerized.
:soapbox:
A good example of this was when a colleage at work was looking for a particular item in a very large data file (it was a text file) and he didn't like reading on the computer screen so he printed it out (around 250 pages) and searched for what he wanted on paper. If he had instead simply used the find command in any ASCII text editor / viewer he would have had his answer in a couple of seconds.

There is nothing wrong with having a display that is familiar to the user but when trying to answer questions make use of the technology!

[smileyguy]

On my Casio EM-500 all I have to do is press the calender button (the hardware on) 4 times to get a year view using Pocket Calender. Press once to get today's schedule, twice to get the week view. The third tap gives month view, and fourth gives the whole year. It may be more than 2 or 3 clicks, but it is "real" simple.

[terrypin]

On my Casio EM-500 all I have to do is press the calender button (the hardware on) 4 times to get a year view using Pocket Calender. Press once to get today's schedule, twice to get the week view. The third tap gives month view, and fourth gives the whole year. It may be more than 2 or 3 clicks, but it is "real" simple.

Thanks - that's the sort of thing I had in mind.

Since my original post, the closest I've got is very similar to what you're doing. Button 2 is assigned to Calendar (Pocket Outlook, not PI). If the last view I'd used was the full year calendar, then just one button press from power off therefore obviously brings that up immediately. At worse, if Agenda, Day, Week or Month view was the last used before power-off, then up to 4 more presses will get me there. That's a one-screen, 12 month view; small font but readable, and of course it minimises page turning or scrolling for most enquiries.

See also my reply to Video11.

Newcomer to PPC, using iPAQ 2210 (PPC 2003).

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Terry, West Sussex, UK

[terrypin]

If you are using Deje's free today screen plugin PI Today for Pocket Informant then tapping on the calendar icon on the very left hand side will pop up the PI 6 month calendar.

You can find PI Today in the forums at PI.

Thanks, yes I am using Deje's excellent add-in. Hadn't thought of that approach to this particular requirement. But, as you see from my reply to smileyguy, I've since come up with an approach that will take some beating.

I've just tried the method you suggest. I expect my setup differs from yours, but there seem some drawbacks here:

From power off
1. Power on
2. Tap Today
3. Tap the LH PIToday icon. Here that brings up PI at present, not the 2-month calendar. PI may be set any view, but usually Agenda. If not, need another stylus tap (or up to 4 button presses) to get there.
4. In PI Agenda view I'm usually in scrolling mode, so double-tap Calendar button to get to 'Bar' mode.
5. Tap the (small) black right-pointing arrow in the bar, below the date.
That seems to bring up the 2-month calendar by default
6. Tap '6'. That gets a 6 month calendar.
7. Tap arrows for moving forward or backward up to 2 months at a time.

So that's typically 7, possibly 8 steps, all but one involving careful stylus actions, versus 1 to 5 quick, reflexive button-presses.

Newcomer to PPC, using iPAQ 2210 (PPC 2003).

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Terry, West Sussex, UK

[Video11]

Hmm...strange. We must have some different settings in PI. Here's how I'm doing it:
1. Power on using "Home" hardware button. This brings me to my 'today' screen.
2. Tap the left most icon in PIToday and up pops my PI 6 month calendar.
3. Tap the black double arrow "<<" or ">>" symbols to scroll forward and back 6 months at a time.

Another method, although it won't get a 6 month calendar is:
1. Power on using "Calendar" hardware button. Button is mapped to PI Calendar. This brings up PI Calendar in whatever view it was last in.
2. Repeated presses of the "Calendar" button will cycle through the different views. Adgenda View -> Day View -> Week View -> Month View.
3. Use "D-Pad" hardware button to scroll forward and back in your calendar view.

Not as good as a 6 month calendar view, but no need for your stylus. :shrug:

[doogald]

Actually, this is one thing that Agenda Fusion does quite well - you can redefine a hardware button to display a 12 month calendar. Like PI, you can also have it set to the AF calendar and each press changes from Agenda to Day to Hourly Day to Week etc. - so it ends up that you need 7 presses to get to the year calendar (at that point it's easier to use the stylus to change to the format that you want in two taps). But if you use the year calendar all of the time, AF does have this.

[terrypin]

Hmm...strange. We must have some different settings in PI. Here's how I'm doing it:
1. Power on using "Home" hardware button. This brings me to my 'today' screen.
2. Tap the left most icon in PIToday and up pops my PI 6 month calendar.
3. Tap the black double arrow "<<" or ">>" symbols to scroll forward and back 6 months at a time.

Thanks. I'm puzzled too - see my earlier replies for detail.

Newcomer to PPC, using iPAQ 2210 (PPC 2003).

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Terry, West Sussex, UK