Calendar View on T5

[The Palmster]

Is it just me or did the calendar view on the Palm Desktop and the T5 take a serious step backwards?

Let me explain. On the Palm Desktop included with the T5, the "week" view in calendar does not show the month! It gives you only a # corresponding to the week of the year, i.e. this week is week #48. Who in the world calculates dates using # of weeks of the year? What happened to writing "week of November 28, 2004"?

Secondly, on my old M515, in week view I could pick a time for a scheduled meeting and the Palm would automatically switch to day view to allow me to enter particulars of the meeting. On the T5, I can't pick a time for a scheduled meeting from the week view. Instead, I have to choose the day and then the Palm goes to day view and then I have to choose the time. In other words, what used to take one stroke, now takes two. Isn't this a step backwards?

Curious to know if anyone else noticed this.

[zenlon]

I hadn't noticed your issue with the week view (yet), although I can confirm that mine acts the same. That does indeed seem backwards. Perhaps it was causing some odd problems somewhere?

I have noticed that in month view, when I use the 5-way pad to move to different days, it pops up a list of things happening on that date. Oddly, all of my items marked private on those days are masked out; this is despite the fact that I have set the security preferences to show all records in both the Calendar PIM as well as the PalmOS system preferences. Can anyone confirm this?

By the way, just for friendly info ;) , in many places across Europe (particularly middle and Northern Europe), week #'s are used as a unique reference for weeks, so it is relevant in some locales; In fact it's quite handy, efficient and unambiguous when everyone uses the same system, and many people would also find the lack of week #'s a major omission. However, I fully agree with you that omitting the month indicator is very odd and unfortunate, whether you use these week numbers or not. I, too, will find a lack of month indication a significant loss.

Overall, while I haven't encountered anything yet that stops me altogether from doing something I want to do in the Calendar PIM, I have found myself looking for some of the DateBk5 functionality here and there. The trouble is, I quite like the look of the (built-in) Calendar PIM, particularly its simplistic environment. I also very much like the addition of the "Agenda (Today)" view. So now I'm wondering whether to go back to DateBk5 (which I used happily and exclusively on my now one-week retired TT) or stick with Palm's PIM (which could benefit from a bit more adaptability).

PS. Sad to see my TT go, as it was still a super machine, but very happy with my T5 so far (zero issues of any kind after a slightly turbulent but fully manageable transfer of data from my TT). :D

[The Palmster]

Good to hear that I'm not the only one who noticed this problem.

As I delve further into it, however, I found a few other unfortunate changes. Used to be that you could re-schedule events in week view to a different day or time simply by dragging the event on your handheld to the new day or time (within the week of course). This drag and drop ability is now gone.

Search results window on the handheld no longer give you dates. It gives you the first 14 characters of the event entry but no date! Even though there is lots of room in the search window to include the date of the event. This is problematic for me as many of my entries simply begin with the name of the client and there are usually many entries under one client name. Tough to differentiate results in the search window when you only get 14 characters and no date!

Now that's backward progress for sure!

I can confirm that in month view, private records are still masked notwithstanding security settings set to "show private records". BTW, thanks for this little tip. I didn't even know that I could manipulate month view in this manner using the D-Pad. Now that's REAL progress.

[kalel_rojin]

Search results window on the handheld no longer give you dates. It gives you the first 14 characters of the event entry but no date! Even though there is lots of room in the search window to include the date of the event. This is problematic for me as many of my entries simply begin with the name of the client and there are usually many entries under one client name. Tough to differentiate results in the search window when you only get 14 characters and no date!
I use FindHack 4.0.6 http://fpillet.free.fr/findhack.html and it shows the dates when searching on my T3. Also maybe OSv5.2.1 is not same as 5.4 in that on my T3 in week view it shows the week number in the top right of the screen and shows the Month in the top left of the screen. Has OSv5.4 realy done away with the month being displayed in the top left? If so what displays in the top left of the screen in week view? I disabled findhack on my T3 and I still see dates in the search result screen, has OSv5.4 really done away with this? can anyone post some screen shots of this tragedy?

[The Palmster]

The month display has been removed on the Palm Desktop not on the handheld. Instead, there is a drop-down category bar on the Palm Desktop in the week view to toggle between categories. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

Curious to know, can you re-schedule events in the week view on the handheld by simply dragging them to a different time or day on your T3?

[kalel_rojin]

The month display has been removed on the Palm Desktop not on the handheld. Instead, there is a drop-down category bar on the Palm Desktop in the week view to toggle between categories.
I have Palm Desktop v4.1.4 (What version do you have?) in week view i see the category bar and a week # bar and to right of the week # bar it displays the month (ex. "November 28, 2004 to December 04, 2004") and at the far bottom right of the window it displayes the date of the currently selected day (ex. "12/2/2004") Of course I normally use Outlook for my Desktop interface but I opened up Palm Desktop just now to check this out.

Curious to know, can you re-schedule events in the week view on the handheld by simply dragging them to a different time or day on your T3?
Nope. At least not with the built-in calendar application (which as far as all the PIM apps go, I have always stuck to the built-in ones)

[The Palmster]

I'm also using Palm Desktop 4.1.4! That is strange! At the top is the following in order of appearance: Category drop-down menu, Week of #, GoTo button and Today button. The bottom right only shows today's date. Doesn't change when selecting a different day.

Also strange is that the ability to drag events was built-in on my Palm M515. I guess that option was changed sometime ago if your T3 does not have the ability to do this. This is very strange. Why remove functionality??? This drives me nuts.

[The Palmster]

Well, for what its worth, here's the official line from PalmOne regarding the "drag and drop" feature "formerly" available in "week" view:

"The "drag and drop" feature of Date Book (Calendar) events in the week view is no longer supported, starting with Tungsten E and T3, T5 and Zire 72 and 31 handhelds. I would like to inform you that we would forward all the feedbacks to the respective department. We apologize for any inconveniences caused."

It may be time to look for a third party application which woud better fit my needs.