.KEYWORD organized0302
.FLYINGHEAD THE ORGANIZED HANDHELD
.TITLE More on staying organized
.OTHER
.SUMMARY Last month, Contributing Editor Michael Connick shared with you a simple solution for staying organized. That article generated enormous reader response, so this month Michael expands on his concept and answers some of the most frequently asked questions about how it works.
.AUTHOR Michael Connick
My article in the February issue of PalmPower’s Enterprise Edition, "A simple solution to staying organized," (at http://www.palmpowerenterprise.com/issues/issue200202/organized001.html) generated more email than any article I’ve ever written for PalmPower’s Enterprise Edition. I must have stumbled onto a major concern of the readers of this magazine! Therefore, I’m going to elaborate on my approach to staying simply organized, and I’ll answer some of the most common questions I received via email.
.H1 How do you synchronize email messages and Word documents?
I don’t directly synchronize email and Word documents to my Palm handheld. Here’s what I do instead:
For large Word documents, I use Wordsmith (at http://www.bluenomad.com/ws/prod_wordsmith_details.html) to synchronize with my Palm handheld. However, in most cases I’m only interested in saving copies of documents smaller than 4K in size or sections of larger documents. For these, I just copy or import the appropriate information into a Palm Desktop Memo. Although I run Outlook 2000 on my work system, I’ve found it to be more trouble than it’s worth for synchronizing. So I synchronize with my Palm handheld using the Palm Desktop application.
For importing email messages, I use a Windows macro package called KeyText 2000 (at http://www.mjmsoft.com). I’ve set it up to automatically import and reformat email messages into Palm Desktop Memos. This software only costs $25 and is a real boon for automating any repetitive tasks you may have to perform on your Windows computer. The reason I use the macro package instead of just copying and pasting an email message into a Palm Desktop Memo is that it imports the entire email message, including the headers. Just copying and pasting the message would only save the message body, without including the From, To, Date, and Subject header fields.
For those of you who might be interested in using this package, below is the KeyText command I use for automatically copying an Outlook 2000 email message into a Palm Memo:
.BEGIN_CODE
{Alt F}A{Tab}t{Return}{Shift Tab}c:\temp\emailMsg{Return}{Pause 1}{Click “Yes”}{Run “^Palm Desk” “C:\Program Files\Sony Handheld\palm.exe”}{Alt F}I{Tab}TT{Shift Tab}c:\temp\emailMsg{Click “Open”}{Pause 1}{Click “OK”}{Pause 2}{Click “OK”}
.END_CODE
For this macro to operate correctly you’ll need to have a directory called "temp" on your C drive that contains a file named "emailMsg.txt" in it. This file can contain anything you like the first time you create it. After that, it will automatically be reused by the KeyText macro to hold a complete copy of your current email message, including all the headers, for import into a Palm Memo. Also, you’ll need to change the path shown for the "palm.exe" program to the correct path on your particular machine. Finally, make sure that the Palm Desktop application is set up with the Memo Pad as the Startup Application. You can do this by using the Option menu of the Palm Desktop program.
There’s one final use I make of KeyText when importing email messages. I prefer to have the title of the Memo containing an email message to be the Subject field of the message. I also like to have a timestamp appended to it. So, after I’ve imported an email message to the Memo Pad using the above KeyText macro, I select the message’s Subject line and run the KeyText macro shown below:
.BEGIN_CODE
{Ctrl X}{Up}{Up}{Up}{Up}{Up}{Up}{Up}{Up}{Up}{Up}{Up}{Ctrl V}{Left} – {Date “M/d/yy”} {Time}
.END_CODE
This macro moves the Subject line up to the top of the Memo and appends a date/timestamp to it. If you’re not quite as fanatical as I am about email Memo formatting, just ignore it! With Memo Leaf (at http://www.redwood-creative.com/softwar2.htm), you shouldn’t have any trouble quickly finding an email message regardless of title line.
Figure A shows an example of an email message saved on my Palm handheld.
.FIG A Here’s an example of an email message saved on my Palm handheld.
.H1 What if the email message is greater than 4K in size?
One of the nice features of the Palm Desktop is that if you attempt to import a Memo larger than 4K in size, it will automatically split the data into multiple Memos. In that case ,I just do a little manual editing to make sure that each Memo has the Subject line and date/timestamp in its title line, along with a "Part 1," "Part 2," etc., appended to it. Luckily, virtually all email messages I receive are shorter than 4K in length.
.H1 Why don’t you just use the To Do application for everything?
This was actually the most interesting question I received regarding my original article. Why not use the To Do application for all your To Do items, email messages, and reference material? The application could certainly handle all this data, along with providing Priority and Due Date fields. In addition, To Do items not completed on a particular day would automatically "float" into the next day. With my scheme of using Memos for To Do items, I have to manually move my To Do items into the next day’s category. Isn’t this a waste of time and violation of my self-imposed simplicity rule?
In spite of the above, I still find that using the To Do application as my primary organizational database has some real disadvantages.
First of all, I don’t really see the need to revisit my To Do list each day to be a major problem. I actually see it as an advantage to not just let tasks automatically float into each new day. Each morning I rename the previous day’s category name to the current date, and I go about creating a reasonable set of To Do items to perform that day. I actually find this approach to be a good way of making sure that I’m not ignoring tasks I may find to be drudgery to do and end up with a realistic daily workload.
Second, the built-in To Do application doesn’t support Memo Leaf. I use Memo Leaf as my Palm handheld’s "content manager" and find it indispensable for finding and organizing data on my Palm handheld.
Finally, the archiving mechanism I use for removing dated material from my Palm handheld’s main memory only works with the Memo database.
.H1 So, how do you handle archiving?
The ability to archive older material is quite important when using the Memo database for holding To Do items (both pending and completed), email messages, and reference material. Left unchecked, the Memo database on my Palm handheld would grow to astronomical size over time, completely filling its memory. As it is, after a month’s worth of use, my Memo database grows to over 700K in size. So, at the end of each month, I archive the email messages and completed To Do items for that month to relieve the memory crunch.
The way I handle this archiving is to use a freeware Windows-based application called Memo2Web (at http://www.geocities.com/dccase/pilot/pilot.htm). This converts selected categories (Email and Completed in my case) into nicely formatted Web pages. You can store these Web pages on your Windows machine and use your favorite browser to quickly display the page and use the browser’s Find function to locate specific items. After the categories have been archived, it’s easy to use Memo Leaf to delete the archived material from your Palm handheld and free up lots of valuable memory.
This approach will likely satisfy most people. However, a serious Palm handheld user like myself will insist on having all this material right at hand on the device, especially if the device supports an expansion memory card.
Actually, since I often use my Palm handheld in the role of laptop replacement, it’s important for me to have all my archived material available on my Palm handheld. There are a couple of ways of getting this material onto a Palm handheld’s memory card so that it can be easily searched and retrieved.
The first approach is to simply save the Web pages created by Memo2Web into a Palm OS-accessible format using either Plucker (freeware available from http://www.plkr.org) or iSilo (a commercial program available from at http://www.isilo.com). Both of these will take a Memo2Web page and convert it into a format accessible by your Palm handheld. They both support searching functions. After conversion, the files can be loaded onto your Palm handheld’s memory expansion card, and you’ll have all the information readily at hand whenever you may need it.
Alternatively, you can select all the Memos within a category of the Palm Desktop Memo application, copy them, and then paste them into a text document on your PC. You’ll probably want to do some cleanup of this information with a text editor. Finally, convert this text file into a Palm DOC file using the freeware MakeDocW program (at http://www.pierce.de/makedocw.html) and copy it onto your memory expansion card.
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Either way, you’ll have all of the information you’ll need right at hand on your Palm handheld.
.H1 Conclusion
I hope I’ve answered any questions you may have had and further clarified my approach to simply staying organized using a Palm handheld. If you have any further questions about this approach, please don’t hesitate to send me email.
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.H1 Product availability and resources
For the article, "A simple solution to staying organized," by Michael Connick in the February 2002 issue of PalmPower’s Enterprise Edition, visit http://www.palmpowerenterprise.com/issues/issue200202/organized001.html.
For more information on Wordsmith, visit http://www.bluenomad.com/ws/prod_wordsmith_details.html.
For more information on KeyText 2000, visit http://www.mjmsoft.com.
For more information on Memo Leaf, visit http://www.redwood-creative.com/softwar2.htm.
For more information on Memo2Web, visit http://www.geocities.com/dccase/pilot/pilot.htm.
For more information on Plucker, visit http://www.plkr.org.
For more information on iSilo, visit http://www.isilo.com.
For more information on MakeDocW, visit http://www.pierce.de/makedocw.html.
For more information on Palm handhelds, visit http://www.palm.com.
.H1 Easy, flexible article reprints
ZATZ now offers a quick, easy, flexible and inexpensive way to use article reprints in your marketing and promotion efforts. You can now get article reprints for a one-time fee of only $200. For details, visit http://mediakit.zatz.com/reprints.
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.BIO
.DISCUSS http://powerboards.zatz.com/cgi-bin/webx?50@@.ee6fd79
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