HOWTO: Using Alarms on Windows PC
| Views: 1500 Created: 08-10-2010 23:38 Last Updated: 08-31-2011 10:50 |
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ListPro allows you to set alarms based on the items in your lists. When the
time for the alarm arrives, ListPro will pop up a window on your computer. The
alarm will be displayed regardless of whether ListPro is running or not.
Alarms are always based on the predefined Date column in each list. If you
enable Alarms for a list, each item in the list that has a date entered into the
Date column can cause an alarm to go off when that date arrives. For example, if
the item represents a task and the Date column holds the Due Date, the alarm
will go off on the date the task is due.
Here's how to set up an alarm for one of your lists:
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Make sure alarms are enabled for your ListPro File. To do this select from the
menu and make sure Enable alarms for this file on this
computer is checked.
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Open the List Properties window for your list and select the Columns Tab.
Find the predefined Date column and make sure its checkbox is checked so you can
use the column. The predefined Date column will have an asterisk at the end of
its entry in the type column ("Date*"). It's OK to rename this column to
something other than "Date" if you want to.
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Select the Date column and push the Modify
button to open the Column Properties window for this column. Alarms will work if
the column's Form is set to Date only or Date and time, but not Time
only. If the Form is Date and time, the
item's current value will determine both the date and the time of day that the
alarm goes off. If the Form is Date only, the
current value will determine the date, but the time of day will depend on the
setting in the Alarms Tab (see step 4 below). Close Column Properties.
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Select the Alarms Tab of the List Properties window. The name of the column
that will be used for Alarms is noted at the top, so make sure it is the column
you plan to use. Then make sure the Enable alarms for this
list option is checked. If your Date column is using the Form Date only, make sure to check Time of
day to display alarms and enter the time of day you want the alarms to go
off. If you don't enable this option the alarm will go off by default at 8:00
AM. If your Date column is using the Form Date and
time, the Time of day to display alarms
option is not used since the alarm will activate at the time chosen for the item
in the Date column.
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Make sure that there is a value in the Date column for each item in your list
that needs an alarm.
When an alarm goes off, a window appears up on your computer to telling you
the item name, list name and file name for the alarm. If you push the Close button on the window, it will simply go away. If
you push the Open button, the list is opened
(launching ListPro, if necessary), with the alarm item selected.
ListPro can keep track of the alarms in your ListPro files as long as it
knows where they are. When you first enable alarms for a list in a given file,
ListPro will ask you to enable alarms for the file. If you move or rename your
file, however, ListPro will no longer know where it is. For this reason, anytime
you move or rename a ListPro file with alarms in it you must re-enable alarms
for the file by selecting from the
menu and checking the Enable alarms for this file on this computer option.
You must also manually enable alarms for a ListPro file in the following
cases:
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You received a ListPro file via email.
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You downloaded a ListPro file.
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You created the ListPro file using ListPro on a Pocket PC or other mobile
device and then File Synced it to your Windows PC computer. When you enabled
alarms for the file on the mobile device, it was enabled on that computer, but
not on your Windows PC computer; you still have to enable alarms manually
there..
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You are using a ListPro file that is on a File Server on your LAN, and it was
created on a computer other than your Windows PC. If the file on the File Server
becomes inaccessible for a long period of time, you may have to re-enable it
again. Also, when a ListPro file is shared on a LAN, alarms that were not set by
you are not guaranteed to go off on your computer. Most alarms set at least a
day in the future will go off, however.
Of course, you can also disable alarms for certain ListPro files if you do
not want to receive alarms for them. For example, you may want to receive the
alarms on your mobile device, but not on your Windows PC.
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The Date column you use for alarms is not required to use the Manual Behavior. The AutoDate/Time Behavior would not be useful,
but you might want to use Calculations. For example, if you have a list of
meeting date/times you might want an alarm to go off a short time before the
meeting rather than right when the meeting starts. You could accomplish this by
having an additional date column called Meeting
Time that holds the actual meeting time and a Number column called
Warning Time that holds the Amount of time
before the meeting that you want the alarm to go off. You then set the Date
column for alarms to be a calculation of Meeting
Time minus Warning Time. The
alarm will then go off a short time before the meeting. The Date column would
not have to be showing in the list in this case. One thing to be aware of is
that Warning Time is interpreted as a
number of days, so you would enter 0.01 for a 15 minute warning, 0.02 for a half
hour warning, and so on.
You may have noticed that ListPro installs a program called ListProAlarms in
your Startup menu. This program is required to be running in order for ListPro
to display alarms. This program uses few resources, so it should not be
noticeable even if you're not using alarms. If you wish to remove this program
from your Startup menu so it's not always running, doing so will not effect the
normal operation of ListPro, except that alarms will never go off.
Alarms are only accurate to about a minute, so they will not necessarily go
off the moment your computer's clock reaches the appointed time. They should go
off within a minute of that time, however. |
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