These help files always cover the latest release of Pimlical, so if you see some discrepancy or some feature that doesn't seem to be present, go into menu | About and tap the UPGRADE button to see if you have the very latest official release of Pimlical/Android installed.
Permissions (new in V-3.5.41)
When you first launch Pimlical on a clean install (i.e. not installing it on top of an existing version) it will ask you for permission to access three things: external storage, Contacts, and the Android Calendar. To use Pimlical you must allow Pimlical access to all three items. If you attempt to deny access, Pimlical will simply tell you WHY the access is needed and then request it again. You can hit Exit but Pimlical will then just EXIT to the main screen.
The only other permission that Pimlical needs is to the phone (if you are going to dial a phone number). This permission will be requested if either (a) you tap the PHONE icon in an event selection list (i.e. you had a phone number in the Location field) or (b) you invoke Pimlical contacts. You do not have to grant access to the phone, but neither can Pimlical dial a number if you have denied permission (a brief message appears instead advising you as to why it can not dial the number).
It may seem non-obvious as to why Pimlical insists on access to Contacts - the reason is that Pimlical needs that access in order to determine what your primary email address is. Otherwise it would be forced to use your DeviceID as a ReferenceID for licensing purposes (which is much less convenient).
Permissions are remembered when you upgrade, provided the old version is still installed. If you remove the old version first, however, Pimlical has to start over requesting permissions. You can also go into System Settings | Apps | Pimlical | Permissions and turn permissions on and off (in particular, if you accidentially deny a permission, this is how you would go back and restore it).
Create a New Appointment
You can tap the green [+] button on the command bar (if the command bar is being displayed) or tap anywhere on screen to bring up that days Event Selection List, then tap one of the four buttons at the top of the dialog to create a new appointment, floating event, task or item from a template. In the Day/Day+ views, if you tap in the time column of a time-slot, Pimlical will use the time of that timeslot as the default time for the event. A long press anywhere (except on an appointment in the Day/Day+ views) will bring up the Quick Entry dialog which provides a quick way to enter a new item. You can start with a time to set the time of the event (so 9:30 Lunch would schedule "Lunch" at the 9:30 time slot. You can also use Google's Voice Entry to enter the text into the Quick Entry Dialog with a long press on the Find button. You may want to set the default calendar for creating new items - the preference DefaultApptCategory can be set to the name of the Android Calendar for example.
Change an Existing Appointment
Tap anywhere on screen to bring up that days Event Selection List, then tap the item you want to edit. In the Day and Day+ views, you can long-press the item to go directly to the Edit dialog. Make the desired changes in the Edit dialog and then click OK.
Move Appointment to New Time/Date
Tap anywhere on screen to bring up that days Event Selection List, then tap the item you want to move and change the date in the Edit Dialog. Or long-press the item in the Event Selection List and select Advance 1 Day or Advance 1 Week to move the item to another day. Note that with a repeat series, the popup commands only affect the current instance of the repeat series (use the Edit dialog to change the entire series).
Change length of Appointment
Tap anywhere on screen to bring up that days Event Selection List, then tap the item to bring up the Edit dialog. Tap on the End time field to change the length of the appointment (as you change the time, the duration is displayed in the dialog title).
Switching to Different Views
Use a gesture to switch between views. The gesture to switch views is a left-to-right or right-to-left swipe in the top half of the screen. The views appear in sequence: Day->Day+->Week->Month->Month+->List. You can change that order and also select which views to switch between in preferences. Or, you can use Select Menu | Views and tap on the view you want to display. That same dialog allows you to set the startup view (or "opening view") to display when Pimlical first opens/starts up.
Command Bar
By default, Pimlical displays a command bar at the bottom of the screen. This command bar can be hidden with a preference (ShowCommandBar) if desired, since all the functions in the command bar can also be invoked with swipe gestures (long strokes across the screen). At either end of the command bar are two arrow buttons which move the display to the previous or next day (or days in the Day+ view, or weeks in the Week view, etc.) with a brief tap. A long press on the left arrow button will invoke the Date Picker so you can quickly jump to any date in the calendar. The second button is a green [+] button which will create a new event with a brief tap, or which will bring up the Event Selection list with a long-press. The third button is the T+ button which moves to today in the Day View with a brief tap, or move to today in the current view with a long-press. The remaining four buttons by default invoke various views. All eight buttons are programmable, depending on a preference setting (see Menu | Preferences | Commands/Functions | CommandBarViewButton1 etc.) . By default, these are set to reasonable initial values, but you can choose any view including contacts, memos or the Daily Journal.
Navigating Through the Views
To move to earlier or later items, use a swipe gesture in the bottom half of the screen: left-to-right moves to earlier items (i.e. previous day in day view, previous week in week view, etc.) and a right-to-left swipe moves to later items. You can also use Menu | GoTo to jump quickly to any date in the calendar, or just long-press the left-arrow button in the command bar. In Day/Day+ views, long-press the time fields on the left edge of the screen to switch between showing all hours of the day, or just your standard hours (selectable in Preferences). If the command bar is displayed, you can also put any view on a command bar or one of the four diagonal swipe gestures by going into Menu | Preferences | Commands/Functions and changing the preferences CommandBarViewButton0/1/2/3/4/5/6/7 or UserDefinedGestureTLBR/TRBL.....
The Free Time view displays the free time you have available for the month (menu | Views | Free Time Search). Long-press anywhere in the view to set start/end time and other options. The pie chart shows green for free time and red for busy time. Underneath, the total free time on the day (or largest contiguous block) is displayed. You can create a custom Filter called 'Freetime' to customize the display (such as filtering out canceled or completed events or events in a particular category, etc.) and Pimlical will automatically use it if present.
Viewing all Appointments on a day in Week/Month/Month+ Views
Tap anywhere on the screen to bring up an Event Selection list which shows all events for that day. In the Month and Month+ views, there may not be space to display even a single character of an appointment in which case just a blue down arrow is displayed so you can see there is at least an event on that day. Reduce the pointsize for that view to display some/more of the text of events.
Viewing all appointments in Day/Day+ and List Views
If there are too many appointments to display on the screen, you can scroll the screen up and down with a gesture: Tap and drag up or down in the middle of the screen to scroll it up and down. You can also set the day and list views to autoscroll on today's date (preference setting) so the next, upcoming appointment is always visible when the view is first displayed.
Quick Actions on Appointment in Event Selection List
After bringing up the Event Selection List, a long press on an item displays a list of popup commands. This list is completely configurable in the preferences. If the selected item was a repeat series, the command will typically only affect the instance of the repeat series for the day being displayed.
Long Presses on Buttons
Several buttons in Pimlical support a different action when long-pressed versus a brief tap. Such buttons always have a plus sign (+) at the end of the button legend to signal that it supports a separate action. For example, in the Edit Dialog, the field for the End time displays End(+) - so while a brief tap allows you to set the end time, a long-press allows you to set the end time based upon setting the duration for the appointment.
Finding Appointments
Click the Find button to search the entire calendar database for matching items. All matching items are displayed in an Event Selection List. You can search by several different criteria. If you specify more than one attribute, the search requires that both attributes be present (i.e. an "and" condition rather than "or").
Using Icons
Icons are useful for identifying items on a small screen - especially in the Month and Month+ views. They can also be used in the Find function and thus serve yet another way of grouping items together (example, if all birthdays have a birthday cake icon, you can use Find and just enter the birthday cake icon to display an Event Selection List of everyone's birthday.
Birthdays and Anniversaries
Pimlical can display a person's age or anniversary year from an appointment. In the Edit Dialog, click on button New Tag to insert a birthday or anniversary tag. By default, Pimlical will use the starting year of the appointment to calculate the age, but you can also override that by inserting the 4-digit year after the tag (click on EDIT button in Action Tag dialog and append 4-digit year after the Birthday: or Anniversary: tag).
Using Filters
Filters are an enormously powerful feature in Pimlical, but can be a bit daunting at first. There are five sample filters installed on startup. Appointments_Only only displays appointments and floating events, while Tasks_Only displays tasks. Show_Private displays private events (by default, private events are masked from display), while Hide_Completed hides completed items. To invoke a filter, go into Menu | Filters and click on the desired filter. You can create new filters and edit existing filters.See the help section on Filters for further information.
Pimlical/Android Calendar Database
By default, Pimlical/Android uses the same, identical database as the built-in Android calendar application, so you will see the same events in both applications as they are looking at the same database. The database by default is manually refreshed with Menu | Refresh calendars. So if you enter an event in Google Calendar - even though it syncs to your Android phone a few minutes later, it will not appear in P/A until you refresh the calendar. There is a preference GoogleRefreshInterval which is 0 on installation (no automatic refresh) - but which you can set to a value like 600 seconds (10 minutes) which would then automatically refresh the database at regular intervals.
Pimlical can also use a local calendar database that is maintained on the SD card (or the virtual SD card if the device has no physical SD card). This database is highly optimized and can be read many times faster than the built-in calendar database. This database can sync with Pimlical/Desktop via Pimlical Desktop's DirectSync feature. This database can be used either in lieu of the Android calendar database or in conjunction with it (example, you might use the local database to keep track of older events which Google and Android mishandle and periodically delete).
Uninstalling Pimlical/Android
Before uninstalling Pimlical/Android, it is recommended that you save your Pimlical Folder on the desktop. With new iterations of Android, it is expected that Google will force the removal of any folder created by an application (as part of the cleanup), but this also means that your local calendar, contacts, preferences etc. would all be summarily deleted. It is unfortunate to see Google make bad decisions like this, but it is no different from Microsoft deciding that they know better than you as a user as to what you want. Google was on the right track with Android Permissions, but seems now to have decided that users aren't capable of making rational decisions as to what they will or will not permit.
Learning More about Pimlical/Android
There are a large number of features in Pimlical/Android that are not immediately apparent, so it is worthwhile perusing these help sections to learn more about the functionality. There are also a large number of preference settings that can change the way items are displayed or handled, so it is also valuable to look through all the preferences and read the descriptions for each item (a long-press on an item will display the full description text in a separate dialog for easier reading). For example, if you don't like the auto-capitalizing of each word in the event description, just change the preference AutoCapitalizeEventTitle to false. Or perhaps you would like the Day View when showing today's events to automatically scroll so that the next event is always displayed (AutoScrollDayView). Or perhaps you prefer to have the day of month numbers display at top right rather than bottom right. There are some 450+ preference settings in Pimlical, so if something doesn't work the way you want, there is a very good chance that there is a preference setting that will tailor it for you. The best way to learn about that is to go through ALL the preference items at least one time, reading the long description of each preference.
Even the usual interface to select items is a preference and you can choose an alternate method that may be more suitable if you are using a tablet or device with a large screen. All the buttons on the command bar are programmable and can display whatever functions you find to be most useful to you. Also, the basic concepts in Pimlical/Android and Pimlical/desktop are very similar, so you may find it helpful to also read the Pimlical Desktop Reference manual to address some of the more advanced features.
We'll end with one short example. You need to take medicine twice a day and you must record the precise date/time that you take it. How can this be set up to involve the least amount of effort? Well with just a tiny bit of work, you can accomplish this with one tap, yes, just one tap.
First, create an event that records the event - with an appropriate description (For example: Took Cipro), an icon to indicate its medicine, perhaps a custom color scheme, font etc.. Tap on the New Tag button at the bottom of the edit dialog and check the box for ScheduleIn: and SkipEdit. These two tags say - when inserted as a template, to set the date/time to the current date/time and to skip the edit dialog when inserting the template. Now go to event selection list, long press the item and use Save As Template. Now go into preferences and go into Commands/Functions and find a button on the command bar that you do not use, such as button 6 (CommandBarViewButton6) and change the preference to be T1 - Insert Template #1. Then select the preference TemplateNamesForCommandBar and enter the full description of the template (Took Cipro in this case). Then ok out of the dialog.
You now have a button on the command bar which will display either T1, or if you assigned say the Pill icon it will display a pill on the command bar. Simply tap that button and your event is automatically inserted at the current date/time. Try doing that with any other calendar application !
Last Revised:19Oct2012