Amamba

I am a project manager and use outliner software to keep track of project-related info (files, issues, notes etc). I needed a program that could do it both on PC and PPC. Shadow Plan was the king on Palm, but ever since switching to PPC I was looking for a good outliner.

After being an avid and happy user of PocketThinker for 3 years, I recently learned that this very good outliner software just went belly up... :realmad: Which is a shame, I think they did a very poor job of advertising.

Anyway, I need an info-keeping software that will still be there when WM9 comes around; so after a brief encounter with TreNotes I looked (again) at ListPro. I owned it since v3 and upgraded but never used it, I needed an outliner not a database. It is v5 now, still more of a database and not yet a really good outliner (it wastes lots of useful space and doesn't have a word wrap so on PDA screen, anything past 3rd level is not easy to read). However, they added a hyperlink support in notes, and this combined with custom columns, filtering and speed / simplicity, made it a winner for me.

So, here are some tricks I came up with to make it do what I want; hope it would help somebody else.

Hyperlinks rule. You can link not only to web pages but to files, directories, Outlook emails / tasks meetings, Lotus Notes emails and items, etc. LP has a link field but I found the best way to set up links is in Notes field. You get more info shown, you can insert links between notes, and you can easily cut & paste LP notes to / from Word, Excel, etc. - and your links will work there !

On PC:

file:// opens a file in associated program. E.g. "file://D:\Program ABC\schedule.mpp"

file:/// opens a directory in File Explorer. Very useful to quickly go to a project directory, or your MP3 collection etc.

Notes:// sets a link to a Lotus Notes document (email, meeting etc). To set it, select a document in LNotes, open it's Properties dialog, go to the tab with a "+" mark in it, and copy the line of text closer to the bottom that starts with "Notes" and has some gibberish in it. That's it, this is the link. It will open the document even if it was archived, as long as Notes know where the Archive is.

To set links to Outlook items, I use a free program called OutlookLinker.

TeamScope: Outlook CRM, Contact Management, Workflow - Collaborative Solutions for Outlook

mailto: will create an email link (I don't use it, personally).

There's also a link to dial the phone - useful on phones, obviously ;) ; I don't use it but there's an example in one of the templates included with ListPro.


On PPC:

To create a link to a file, tap & hold in the Notes field, select "Insert Link" and in the link field simply type full file name, with a path (e.g. "\CF Card\Documents\data.docx"). I use a freeware file manager GSFinder+, it has a command to copy full path+file name, this saves time.

I don't know how to set up a directory link on PPC, or if it's even possible.

I also don't know if it is possible to set up a link to open a POL item.

LP doesn't provide functionality to link to POL items, however, I came up with a workaround to quickly create tasks in Pocket Informant from LP items, using Calligrapher. The following PenMacro will select all text in ListPro field that you're writing in, create a new PI Task, and paste text into it:

TO
//Copy selected text to Task
<#Macro>all
<#Macro>copy
<#Macro>NT
<#Delay>4500
<#Macro>paste

Where macro NT will start the shortcut for new PI Task in Start Menu.

If you have a good trick for using ListPro or keeping track of things, share it ! :)

stevenator65

Great tips! Thanks

Zaniax

Concur :)

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