Is This Possible to Do?

[LaurieN]

One of the things I'm using UR for is to keep track of daily tasks to do, appointments, etc. I know some people don't recommend that, but it works better for me than any calendar program I've ever tried (and I've tried a lot).

I created a database I call simply ToDo. I then copied the Year, Month, and Journal Entry templates from the sample db named Journal and some of the folders from the GTD sample db into my db.

Now I'm looking for a quick way to add each day's date and day of the week under the appropriate Month folder so I can add tasks and appointments to the correct day. I have been using the Journal Entry template for the day. When you insert the Journal Entry template each day, the current date is automatically created and displayed for the title. But that doesn't work for me because I want to add all the days for each month now.

In April I manually added 30 Journal Entry templates (renamed to Day) and changed the name to, e.g., "4/01/10 Thurs." That was a lot of work, so I thought I could copy all 30 of those to each month and then rename them for the appropriate date and day of the week. That bombed when I found out that all the tasks I had in April were copied to May.

So that's my dilemna. Is there an easier way to create the daily entries? (I hope my explanation of what I've done makes sense.)

TIA.

[armsys]

Hi Laurie,
First, you must know the strength of your tool. UR is designed to be rapid retrieval of random/chaotic/unstructured data, for example, collecting information from web sites, meeting, class, a crime scene, evidences for a criminal/civil case,..etc. Second to none, UR remains unchallenged in this area.

Second, you must know the limitation of your tool. UR is not programmable. It doesn't offer you macro/VBA facility.

Going back to your situation, I'm afraid you have to create daily items manually.

Just my 2 cents.

Armstrong

[kinook]

Originally posted by LaurieN
One of the things I'm using UR for is to keep track of daily tasks to do, appointments, etc. I know some people don't recommend that, but it works better for me than any calendar program I've ever tried (and I've tried a lot).

I created a database I call simply ToDo. I then copied the Year, Month, and Journal Entry templates from the sample db named Journal and some of the folders from the GTD sample db into my db.

Now I'm looking for a quick way to add each day's date and day of the week under the appropriate Month folder so I can add tasks and appointments to the correct day. I have been using the Journal Entry template for the day. When you insert the Journal Entry template each day, the current date is automatically created and displayed for the title. But that doesn't work for me because I want to add all the days for each month now.

If you add all the days to the Month template, each time a new month item is created, the child days will also be created. You would still need to manually rename them.

In April I manually added 30 Journal Entry templates (renamed to Day) and changed the name to, e.g., "4/01/10 Thurs." That was a lot of work, so I thought I could copy all 30 of those to each month and then rename them for the appropriate date and day of the week. That bombed when I found out that all the tasks I had in April were copied to May.

Use Edit | Paste Special | Duplicate (regular copy/paste will logically link instead of duplicating).

[armsys]

Laurie,
Actually, manual creation of items is easy.
In the Data Explorer, just press Shift+Enter. Then rename the item tile. To rename, simply select some words with mouse/keyword and press F2.
Hope it helps.
Armstrong

[ashwken]

Originally posted by LaurieN

Now I'm looking for a quick way to add each day's date and day of the week under the appropriate Month folder so I can add tasks and appointments to the correct day. I have been using the Journal Entry template for the day. When you insert the Journal Entry template each day, the current date is automatically created and displayed for the title. But that doesn't work for me because I want to add all the days for each month now.

If you have access to a spreadsheet program that allows for auto-fill you could try this:

Name cell 1A "Item Title" (w/o quotes)

For cell 2A enter the date for the first day of the desired month "05/01/2010" (w/o quotes), for UR v.3x you would need to format the date as yyyy/mm/dd, then hold and drag cell 2A downward which should create the consecutive days of the month.

Save this spreadsheet as a text file (csv or tab delimited).

Running UR v.3.5e:

Set focus to the Journal Entry Template, open the Item Attributes Pane (Ctrl-4), click on the IA Pane to set focus, (Insert) to create a new Attribute and select Item Title from the list. Goto the bottom of the IA Pane and the last Attribute should be Title Expression, which should have a value of Date Created, change this to Item Title.

Here I had to close and reopen the db so that this new Attribute shows up during the Import process (UR v.4x may be different).

Set focus to the desired month that you want to import to, select File | Import - a delimited text file (csv), from the Import Dialog select the File to Import (it will see the first line as the Input Field), then select Item Title from the list for the Destination Attribute, select Journal Entry as the Template to import against. In the final dialog be sure to import to The selected item in the Data Explorer Pane.

This could be extended for the entire year, import to a temp folder, then move the imported items to their respective Month.

To return the Journal Entry Template to its default behavior, change the value for Title Expression back to Date Created after the import. 'Course this will cause all new items for the template to show the current date.

It should also be noted that the value displayed for Date Created is controlled under Tools | Options | Miscellaneous - Insert Date/Time As. Depending on your usage, you may want to include a Time value - if you desired to have multiple entries for the same day. Be aware that this setting will apply to ALL dbs.

[armsys]

Hi Ashwken,
Long time no see.
Wow, your solution is much awesome. I have never thought it can be done like this. You're always my guru. Thanks for the time-saving trick.
Armstrong

[ashwken]

Originally posted by ashwken
If you have access to a spreadsheet program that allows for auto-fill you could try this:

Name cell 1A "Item Title" (w/o quotes)

For cell 2A enter the date for the first day of the desired month "05/01/2010" (w/o quotes), for UR v.3x you would need to format the date as yyyy/mm/dd, then hold and drag cell 2A downward which should create the consecutive days of the month.

If you want to include the Day Name after the actual date, select the column (of created dates) and adjust the formating - Excel allows for this.

[ashwken]

Originally posted by armsys
Hi Ashwken,
Long time no see.
Wow, your solution is much awesome. I have never thought it can be done like this. You're always my guru. Thanks for the time-saving trick.
Armstrong

I've not made the jump to v.4x, business has been slow and I haven't felt a compelling need to upgrade - so haven't had much to contribute.

A spreadsheet program (Excel or Open Office) is a good tool for creating, or manipulating, a data set that can be easily imported to UR.

[armsys]

Hi Ashwken,
Kinook should offer you some discount. On the other hand, you may have to ponder whether it's a good investment.
I did test your idea and still yours is the best. At least it can do some automation (of creating meaningful item titles) for UR.
I didn't create forms in UR anymore. Instead, if there's a need, I create it in Access. However, it takes enormous time to do VBA programming.
I thought software consulting is ok in the US. Isn't? Thanks to the release of Win 7 and Office 2010, I'm hopeful the software industry as a whole will perform better in 2010. Nonetheless, I'm often bewildered by the rapid swings of US economy.

[ashwken]

Originally posted by armsys
Hi Ashwken,
Kinook should offer you some discount. On the other hand, you may have to ponder whether it's a good investment.
I did test your idea and still yours is the best. At least it can do some automation (of creating meaningful item titles) for UR.
I didn't create forms in UR anymore. Instead, if there's a need, I create it in Access. However, it takes enormous time to do VBA programming.
I thought software consulting is ok in the US. Isn't? Thanks to the release of Win 7 and Office 2010, I'm hopeful the software industry as a whole will perform better in 2010. Nonetheless, I'm often bewildered by the rapid swings of US economy.

The UR upgrade pricing is reasonable and I have no misgivings as to the worth of the upgrade, but for now v.3.5e serves a purpose.

Unfortunately, I'm in Real Estate and weathering the storm. On the upside, we are in an area that people still want to move to, if and when they can make the move.

My apologies for side-tracking the thread.

[LaurieN]

Ya'll are awesome. (OK, I'm a displaced Texan.)

Kinook, thanks for the info. I'm still learning the tricks to using UR, so I didn't understand that. UR has been pretty easy to use; I'm so glad I found it.

armsys, I forgot to state that I switched from my latest calendar program to using UR because I'm retired and only have a few appointments. I do my volunteer work mostly from home--and that's mostly routine. I've been using EverNote for several years for storing bits of information, but I like UR better for that--although I haven't quit EverNote totally yet. One of the uses I really like for UR is gathering all the bits of my genealogy research from TreePad, .rtf files, and EverNote in one place. Makes it a lot easier to search and to determine where I stopped entering data in my family database in RootsMagic. Over the years I've collected a lot of data and had found it especially hard to organize my .rtf files so I could actually find what I needed.

I'm glad you told me about Shift+Enter. I had been using right-click, which is slow for the 30-31 entries I was doing for each month. I was already using F2 to rename the days.

ashwken, thanks for that easy way to use Open Office SCalc (the spreadsheet I use) to add the daily dates. That should help a lot.

Thanks again to all of you.

Laurie

[armsys]

Hi Laurie,
Thanks for your valuable feedback. You're welcome.
Most tricks and techniques are undocumented in the online help. That makes this forum more valuable to all UR users.

[vogelap]

Originally posted by armsys
Most tricks and techniques are undocumented in the online help. That makes this forum more valuable to all UR users.

It would be useful if the documentation actually documented these tricks & techniques and provided use cases and examples.

[ashwken]

Originally posted by LaurieN
...One of the uses I really like for UR is gathering all the bits of my genealogy research from TreePad, .rtf files, and EverNote in one place. Makes it a lot easier to search and to determine where I stopped entering data in my family database in RootsMagic.

Your comment piqued my interest in renewing this on-off project of my own, and I'm finding UR well suited for gathering from the web (obviously). Wondering if you'd like to start a discussion, compare notes, on using UR for genealogy research - would this be a topic of interest to anyone else ?