Exporting Reminders

The Export Reminders..., or Export Reminder..., menu item allows you to export all or some of your events to the Date Book, Mail, Memo Pad or To-Do List built-in Palm Applications.

Reminder does not support exporting events in version of the Palm OS prior than 3.0. If you are using an older version of the Palm OS, you will see the following dialog when you attempt to use the Export Reminders... menu option:

When you select Export Reminders... the following dialog will be displayed:

Note: if you used the singular "Export Reminder..." menu item from the event screen, you will not see the "What" drop down list.

The "Export To" list:

Allows you to pick which built-in application you wish to export the events to.

The What list:

Lets you specify which events you wish to export. "Near" events will only export those events which are designated as near. The "All Events" option will cause every event in your database to be exported. The final option, "Events Between..." will allow you to specify two dates. All of the events which would occur between those two dates will be the ones exported to the specified application.

When the "Events Between..." option is selected, the export dialog changes slightly:

To change either date, just click on it and the standard date selection dialog will be displayed.

Next, the Category list:

Allows you to limit the events you exports to those in a specific category.

The final option, "Include Notes" allows you to specify whether the notes for each event exported should also be exported.

When you have selected the options you wish, tap on the Continue button to actually perform the Export. The Cancel button, of course, will stop the export process and return you to the form you were on. The process for here will vary slightly based on the application you are exporting to: Date Book, Mail, Memo Pad or To Do List.

Exporting to the Date Book:

If you are exporting to the Date Book, the following confirmation dialog will appear:

This will allow you to specify if you wish to have the events repeat for each day of the "warning" period for that event. If you don't check this option, you will see the event on its "anniversary" date only.

After you tap the OK button, the events will be exported to the Date Book. When the process is done, the following dialog is displayed to inform you of that fact.

When you open the Date Book, you will see the events displayed like the following:

When you click on the entry and tap the Details button, the details will be like the following:

The entry will not have a time specified and will have the private flag set if the event was marked as private in Reminder. If the "Repeat on "Warning" Days" check box was selected, the Date for the entry will actually be the first date in the warning period; otherwise it will be "anniversary" date for the event. In this example, the "Repeat on "Warning" Days" check box was selected, therefore the date book entry is set up to repeat daily starting on the seventh day before the event (This event in Reminder had the default 7 day warning period). Tapping on the Repeat information you will see a repeat set up like the following:

The "End on" date will the anniversary date for the event.

Finally, if you specified that the notes be exported also, you will see the note flag, , in the date book, and if you look at the notes for the entry, it will match the notes in Reminder. For example:

Note: Because Reminder uses the Repeat functionality of the Date Book to support the warning period for the event, the export for an event will need to be done yearly. This was a design decision, I thought it better to support only one repeating entry in the date book rather than creating, in this example, eight entries to have an entry on each warning day.

Exporting to Mail:

If you are exporting to the Date Book, the following confirmation dialog will appear:

Enter the To and From addresses and the Subject on this screen. You can also select the priority for the message that will be created.

After you have set the options as you wish, tap the Mail button to create the mail message.

If all of the records you are exporting are private, the message will be marked as secret. This means that you will not be able to see the messages even in the Mail application! If you are exported a mix of private and public records, the following alert will be displayed:

If you want the message to be marked as secret, tap the Yes button. If you tap the No button, the message will be created as a "normal" message.

When the processes has been completed, the following dialog will be displayed to confirm this:

As sample of the mail message created is:

In this example, the notes were not included in the export. If they were, the note for each event would be place after the "detail" line for each event.

Exporting to Memo Pad:

If you are exporting to the Date Book, the following confirmation dialog will appear:

Enter the title for the memo into which the events should be exported and tap the OK button.

If all of the records you are exporting are private, the memo created will be marked as private. If you are exported a mix of private and public records, the following alert will be displayed:

If you want the memo to be marked as private, tap the Yes button. If you tap the No button, the memo will be public.

When the processing is complete, the following confirmation dialog will be displayed to inform you:

A sample of the memo created by Reminder's export is as follows:

As you can see, in this example, the notes where included in the export. Also, Reminder does not attempt to provide a category for the memo.

Exporting to the To Do List:

If you are exporting to the Date Book, the following confirmation dialog will appear:

For exporting to the To Do List, you can set the priority of the items added. Tap OK to export the events. When the processing is done, just like in all the other cases, a confirmation dialog will be displayed:

Reminder will create one To Do item for each event exported, as shown here:

Select one of the exported to do items and tap Details... and you will see the details like the following:

The priority will be the priority you selected. The Due Date will be the "anniversary" date of the event. The private flag will be set based on the private setting for the event in Reminder. For To Dos, also, Reminder will attempt to maintain the Category between the two programs. If there is a category in To Do which matches the category for the event in Reminder, that category will be selected for the to do item; if there isn't the item will be "unfiled."

As in the date book export, if you specified that the notes be exported also, you will see the note flag, , in the date book, and if you look at the notes for the entry, it will match the notes in Reminder. For example: