About Ultra Recall by a user

[woodlander]

Having just been using it continuously over the last few hours I feel impelled to message in to say how impressed I am by Ultra Recall.

I have been using Ultra Recall for around 4 years or so. During that timeI have played around with other personal document management applications, each with their own particular strengths, but I keep coming back to Ultra Recall as being the most flexible and powerful application which is also configurable closely to my needs.

Given its merits I feel the system is undersold. Perhaps there are two things which affect its use by newcomers.

Firstly I feel the user interface is now somewhat dated though I admit it has extensive configuration abilities built in. I would nevertheless welcome the ability to better customise font colours, pane background colours and so forth. I would like it to look more attractive. Perhaps a visual design expert might be called for - my apologies if there is one!

Secondly I think that taken as whole the user manual is excellent once one has a grasp of its 202 pages. it seems to have everything covered. However I feel a newcomer could be put off by it. For example it is 22 pages into the 'Getting Started' chapter by the time you actually get to the heading 'Creating an Info Database' (and by the way someone reading the manual without seeing the application might be misled by the word 'database'). Before then you are encouraged or disencouraged to get started by being told the minutiae of 'attributes' and other (admittedlt valuable) features of the application. I am sure that some attention to the manual would be helpful to newcomers.

Though it is not fundamental to the application - and to mention it runs the risk of underemphasising other powerful features - I have to say my favourite feature is the 'Title Expessions' facility. This automatically titles an 'item' according to its attributes.

Though I don't contribute to this Forum I do see that queries are promptly replied to by Kinook and this too is appreciated.

So good luck to Ultra REcall!

Best wishes, John M.

[PJMiller]

I have just bought Ultra Recall.

First Impressions are that the application itself is very powerful and appears to do everything I want it to.

The documentation could do with being re-written. I'm sure it's all in there somewhere but it is all split up with so many links, I end up going round in circles.

I think the interface is fine just the way it is but I would support the inclusion of an option to set the background colours of the panes.

The one very minor gripe I have with Ultra Recall is with the 'Contact' template which cannot be deleted or changed. It has the field 'State' to specify which area the contact is from. Very few countries have states, in Britain we have counties. Other countries have Regions, Municipalities or Provinces. It would have been better if this template had not been carved in stone, but then Americans are always very parochial.

[$bill]

Originally Posted by PJMiller

The one very minor gripe I have with Ultra Recall is with the 'Contact' template which cannot be deleted or changed ...[snip]... It would have been better if this template had not been carved in stone.

With a little craftsmanship the "stone" can be "carved" to your liking...


"The Contact template can also be modified to use a custom user-defined form instead of the built-in Contact form"


http://kinook.com/UltraRecall/Manual/contacteditor.htm


UR gives you the tools to create new attributes, edit the template and create a new form.

[PJMiller]

Originally Posted by $bill

With a little craftsmanship the "stone" can be "carved" to your liking...


"The Contact template can also be modified to use a custom user-defined form instead of the built-in Contact form"


http://kinook.com/UltraRecall/Manual/contacteditor.htm


UR gives you the tools to create new attributes, edit the template and create a new form.

I already tried.

I renamed the attribute 'State' to 'County', but the template still calls it 'State'. If I create a new template with the same fields using the new 'County' attribute it is called 'County' on the template until I close Ultra Recall, when I re-open the program the field is now called 'State'.

Next try was to define a new form called 'Contact' with the correct fields. I did this, there was no error message when I pressed OK but the new form did not replace the contact template. The 'Contact' template was unchanged.

The only way to do this is not to re-name the attribute or re-define the form but to create a separate attribute called 'County' then build a new form with a different name using that new attribute.

But this still leaves a useless 'Contact' template in the list which cannot be deleted or changed.

But as I said this is a very minor annoying issue. The program is very good.

[kinook]

Originally Posted by PJMiller

I renamed the attribute 'State' to 'County', but the template still calls it 'State'. If I create a new template with the same fields using the new 'County' attribute it is called 'County' on the template until I close Ultra Recall, when I re-open the program the field is now called 'State'.

I couldn't reproduce this behavior -- can you provide more details on the steps you followed?

Next try was to define a new form called 'Contact' with the correct fields. I did this, there was no error message when I pressed OK but the new form did not replace the contact template. The 'Contact' template was unchanged.

This worked ok for me too -- I created a custom form named Contact, assigned it to the Contact template's Form attribute, and the template and contact items display my custom form.

The only way to do this is not to re-name the attribute or re-define the form but to create a separate attribute called 'County' then build a new form with a different name using that new attribute.

But this still leaves a useless 'Contact' template in the list which cannot be deleted or changed.

In the latest build (UltraRecall.exe 5.1.0.4 in Help | About | Install Info after downloading and installing), the built-in Contact form has been modified to use the attribute names for field captions, so for instance, if the State attribute is renamed to County, it will display that way on the Contact form.

But as I said this is a very minor annoying issue. The program is very good.

Thanks.

[PJMiller]

Strange. It now works. I don't know what I was doing wrong.

I did download the latest version 5.1.0.4 and installed it on top of the one which was already there and now the Firefox toolbar works (which it didn't before).

Anyway now I can rename the attribute and the label on the form changes.

Thank you for your help.