The Calendar Window

The large Calendar Window displays an overview of events and daily notes for a week, multi-week, month, two months or a year. You can use it to view events, view and modify spans (banner events) and move events around. At the top of it is a toolbar with various icons:

The View Selection pop-up menu changes the current view in the Calendar. Choose a view from the popup list when you click on it.

The circular target icon displays the current week, month or year in the calendar depending on the current view. The current day will be displayed in the Reminders window and in the Events window if it is open.

The right arrow button displays the next month in the Calendar when in Month view. It moves forwards one month when in 2 Month view, so if January and February had previously been displayed then February and March would now be displayed. In Week view, as well as 2 Week, 3 Week, 4 Week and 5 Week view, the right arrow moves the display forwards one week into the future.

The left arrow button displays the previous month in the Calendar when in Month view. It moves backwards one month when in 2 Month view, so if February and March had previously been displayed then January and February would now be displayed. In Week view, as well as 2 Week, 3 Week, 4 Week and 5 Week view, the left arrow moves the display backwards one week into the past.

The slider lets you scroll through the months for the year. If you drag the slider past December or before January, it will scroll into the direction you drag towards, letting you see the year after or before the one currently displayed. Release the slider to update the Calendar display.

The ‘fast forward’ and ‘rewind’ double headed arrows jump twelve months forward or back respectively in the Calendar display.

Spans: Banner Events

The span button creates banner events which span several days, referred to as spans. To the left of the span button in the toolbar is a colour swatch. Click on this to pop up a menu of colours. The colour you choose will be the colour of the next new span you create. Click and hold the span button and drag a span out onto the Calendar onto the day you want it to start on. Alternatively, you can click on the day you want the span to start on and click once on the span button in the toolbar. A span will fly out onto the current day.

The new span is two days long. To make it longer, hover the mouse pointer over the span. You will see arrows appear on the left and right hand sides of the span. Click and hold the right hand arrow and drag the mouse cursor to the right, and the span will grow. In monthly or multi-week views in the calendar, drag downwards onto the row below and the span will start to fill that row. You can fill all visible rows if necessary. If you click and hold the left hand arrow icon and drag to the left and upwards, the span will increase in this direction. If you click and hold the span anywhere in its middle, then drag, you can move the span to a new location.

You can have several on different rows. spans can appear up to 8 levels deep in the Calendar window. Two spans on the same level cannot overlap. If you are trying to make a span longer and you hit the edge of another span on the same level it will automatically move down underneath the other span. You can also adjust what level a span appears at by right-clicking on it and choosing the option ‘Nudge span down a level’ or ‘Nudge span up a level’.

When you click on a span in the Calendar window, a field appears in the Reminders window allowing you to edit the text of the span. There are also start and end dates displayed below this field, click on these to change the date using a date picker. Clicking on the colour swatch next to the field lets you choose a new colour for the span from the swatches menu. You can delete the span by clicking on the ‘delete span’ button.

Moving Events and the Event popup menu

To move an event to a different day, simply drag the event in the Calendar display to a different day. If you drag a repeating event to a new date, all instances of that repeating event will change. For instance, if you drag one event that is part of a set that repeats every week to a date three days in the future, all the other repeats will move three days into the future. Sometimes you may want only one event in a repeating set to move to a different date. In order to do this, hold down the command key while you drag an event to a new date: an exception to the normal repeat pattern is created. You can also set one instance of a repeat event not to show on a particular day, but leave the other repeats as they are. To do this, right click on the event and choose ‘Don’t show event on this day’ from the popup menu. You can also choose which repeat exceptions to remove from the popup menu, or remove all exceptions for a repeat event.

Editing All-Day Notes and Events

To edit an event shown in a field in the Calendar window, click on it and it will open in the Day View window where you can alter the event text and other properties such as repeats or alarms. To edit all-day notes for a particular date, click on notes in their field in the Calendar window and the text will become editable in the central field in the Day View window. Click in a blank area of a date’s field in the Calendar window and you will be able to type new all-day notes for that date in the Day View. Hold down the option key on the keyboard and click anywhere in a date’s field in the Calendar window to create and edit a new event for that date in the Day View. You can also create a new event on a particular date by double-clicking a date number in the Calendar window. To simply display a particular date in the Day View, click once on a date number in the Calendar.

Scrolling the Calendar or Individual Date Fields

Normally using the scroll wheel or scroll gesture when the mouse cursor is above the displayed dates in the Calendar window will scroll the whole calendar up or down. You can also choose ‘View > Scroll Fields Under Mouse Cursor in Calendar’ from the menu bar. With this option selected, if a date field in the Calendar is not tall enough to display all the events it contains, you can scroll the contents of the date field under the mouse cursor up or down using the scroll wheel or scroll gesture.

The Choose Calendar Window

Click on the button with a folder and a triangle in it in the main toolbar to reveal the Choose Calendar window. Calendars are like folders into which you can group events. Notes entered into the central field of the Reminders Window can not be grouped into calendars, but any events which appear in the right hand column of the Reminders window can have a specific calendar.

The Choose Calendar window lets you create, edit or choose calendars. To start with there is one Calendar called ‘Default’. You can click on the ‘New’ button to add a new calendar. Double-click on a calendar in the list to reveal the editing pane at the bottom of the window. You can change the name of the calendar using the first field and enter notes about the calendar in the field below. Click on the colour swatch in the bottom-left hand corner to set a different colour for the calendar. Existing events in the calendar which have had their own custom colour assigned to them will not change to the new colour. In order to force all events in the calendar to have the same colour, click on the ‘Restyle Whole Calendar’ button. The window that appears will also give you the option to set the same text size and font for all events in a calendar. Please note that any restyling changes made to a calendar from this window cannot be undone.

To set a calendar as the current calendar in which new events will be created, or imported to using the ‘Import’ menu option, simply click on it in the main list, and it will be highlited. You can change an event to be in a different calendar by using the Calendar popup menu when editing an event in the Reminders window. Click here for more information.

To place a Calendar and all events in it in the Trash, right click on the Calendar name in the main list and choose ‘Trash this Calendar’ from the contextual menu. To restore a Calendar from the trash, and all events in it, use the actions popup menu in the bottom right hand corner of the Choose Calendars window. This shows a list of all calendars in the trash. Choose the one you want to restore. If you empty the trash using the command in the Find window, all Calendars and events in the trash will be permanently removed.

PreMinder Preferences

PreMinder has many custom options which you can change in the Preferences window. This can be accessed by choosing ‘Preferences’ from the PreMinder menu or using the keyboard shortcut ‘Cmd-K’. There are two tabs to the Preferences window, ‘General’ and ‘Appearance’. The General tab is shown when the window opens. To jump straight to the Appearance tab when the Preferences window is closed, you can use the keyboard shortcut ‘Cmd-Shift-K’.

Schedule Start and End Times

This pair of sliders lets you set the start and end times for the at-a-glance schedule shown to the left hand side of the Day view window. The morning can be set to start between 6am and 11am and the last time shown can be early afternoon or up 11pm in the evening. By setting the normal time range during the day when you have appointments, it means you don’t have to scroll through large areas of empty schedule to see events.

Alarm Notifications with Growl

PreMinder can display alarms using Growl notifications. These options let you check if Growl is installed and display a test notification.

Show people’s ages in birthday events

This displays the age of the person on a particular birthday displayed in the calendar, depending on the year being viewed.

Check for updates automatically

Periodically check if a new update to PreMinder is available for download from the Internet

Auto-check for times as you type daily notes

As you type notes in the central field of the Day View, match anything that appears to be a time and show it in the schedule on the left-hand side of the Day View.

Show options for events in Day View window

With this option activated, when you click on an event in the right hand list of the Day View, several options will be displayed underneath the event text. These include controls to set repeats and alarms for the event. This option is active by default.

Calendar / iCal Sync

Here you can choose whether to sync with system calendars when PreMinder is launched, and if you want to perform a full sync or just a quick sync which only checks through events in recent months before and after the current date.

Quick Sync Period

Here you can set the size of the quick sync period.

Make number(s) at start of event entry into times

By default the examples ‘3pm’, ‘3:00’ or ‘1-3pm’ will be recognised as times when you type in an event. With this option activated, numbers at the very start of the event will also be recognised as times, for instance ‘1’ or ‘3’ or ‘1-3’.

From Calendar, edit events in the Day View window or the Events window

When you click (Or double-click) on an event in the Calendar window, it will open for editing in either the Day View window or the Events Window. You can change the default window for editing an event using these radio buttons. The Day View window is recommended as the Events Window is an older design with fewer options than the Day View window.