A description of the Reminder program

The Reminder program is designed to ensure that you never again forget important dates.  It checks to the current date, and tells you when something is less than a few days away (configurable between 1 and 10).  If there is nothing to remind you about, it does nothing and you would never know it had been quietly checking your dates for you.

Remind is birthday e-mail ware.  That's to say, you're entitled to use it or copy it to others (providing the full program set and documentation are copied), providing that you send the author a congratulatory e-mail on his birthday.

What is Remind?

Setting Up Remind

How To Use Remind

Configuring Remind

Updating your dates

How do I find out which dates are in my "birthday" list?


What is Remind?

Remind is a program that helps you remember important events in your life.  These might be events that occur every year, like birthdays, anniversaries or Christmas, or one-off events, like publishing deadlines, an important dinner or a sporting event.  The regular events are referred to as "year independent" and the one-off events are "year dependent".  You maintain 2 Windows™ Calendar files using the "Calendar" application - documented with your Windows manuals.  More details on calendar files can be found in the Updating your dates section of this help file.


Setting Up Remind

The Setup program should have installed remind.exe, remind.hlp and spin.dll in their own directory (c:\remind by default), and should have created a program group called "Configure Remind".  It should also have put remind into the startup group, so that it is loaded every time windows runs.  You should not need to do any other setting up - simply Configure it and away you go.


Configuring Remind

To configure the reminder program either double click the icon in the "Configure Remind" group, or use File Manager (or similar) to run "remind config".  There is then a menu with "configure" on it.

The following features can be configured:

The position and size of the reminder screen

The name of the file(s) used and how far into the future the reminder sees

The amount of time remind stays on screen

The fonts used in the display


Configure Filenames

From this dialog box, you can configure whether you want to use a year dependent (one offs) or year independent (birthdays) file, or both, how far ahead they look, and the filenames used.  The files must be created using the Calendar accessory and should therefore have a ".cal" extension.

To make remind use a year independent (birthday) file, click on the "Active" checkbox in the year independent section.  Then either type in the name of the calendar file you plan to use for birthdays, etc., or, if you've already created it (see Updating your dates), click on the Browse button and you can look for the correct file in the normal way.

The Warn period can be set between 1 and 10 days, and defines how far into the future Remind "looks".  If set to 1 days, it will only remind you about events occurring tomorrow.  It will always remind you about what you missed yesterday!

The year dependent date file is set up in the same way.


Configure Size

To configure the size of the window, run it in "config" mode and size and move it in the normal way - it will remember this setting in future.


Configure Timeout

Remind will always "disappear" when the mouse is clicked on it or any key hit.  However, it can also be configured to disappear of its own accord, after a predetermined time.  This can be set to be 1, 2, 5 or 10 minutes.  If you only want it to disappear when you click on it, set the timeout to "No Timeout".


Configure Fonts

All three fonts used by Remind can be separately configured - the "Title" font (which says "Don't Forget!"), the "Reminders" font and the "Bottom line" font, which reminds you of how to dismiss Remind.  To change a font, select the one you want to change from the drop down list, click on the "Change >>>" button and select the new font from the dialog box.  If you're happy with the new font, click on OK.  At that point, you can't cancel the change, so the Configure Fonts dialog box changes its "Cancel" button to "Close".

Note that the "Script" font will look a little different in the reminder screen, because I make it a little wider than standard, for reasons of legibility.


How to use the Reminder program (remind.exe)
How to use the Reminder program

Remind should be fully set up and ready to go - the only thing you need to do is configure it and put the dates  you want reminding about in your calendar file(s).

You should get a display on screen of the important dates in the next few days.  The display will always stay "on top" of any other window (program manager, for example).  It can be got rid of by clicking the mouse anywhere in the display area, or hitting any key.  It will disappear of its own accord in 1 minute, if left.


Updating your important dates

To update your list of dates, run the calendar program by double clicking the icon shown below, which will probably be found in your "Accessories" group.

Birthdays

For the file which you've named as year independent, go to the date of, for example, an important birthday.  Use the blank section at the bottom of the day to note the significance of the date - for example, under December 26, put "Boxing Day" (although most people can remember this!). Put your reminder in the location indicated with the arrow below.

Note that it doesn't matter what year you use - the program ignores the year completely for this file.

Don't make the comment too long - the reminder program only allows 1 line per entry - anything else is lost.

Other Dates

For non-repeating dates, use the calendar application to open your year-dependent file, and edit it in the same way as above.


How do I find out which dates are in my "birthday" list?

Since you might have entered birthdays in any year, it can be a little tricky to find out whom you've entered where.  The best way to avoid this problem is always to use the same year for all your birthdays.  Note that calendar doesn't support days earlier than 1980, so you can't use the year of your birth! (Well, I can't anyway).  However, if you're not sure whom you've entered, the best solution is to use calendar to do a printout, starting at 1/1/80 and ending today.  That way, you're sure to get all the relevant dates included.


Phil Holmes wrote this.  His birthday is 11th December.  His e-mail address is holmespe@boat.bt.co.uk.