Section Three - Using the Diary

This chapter will show how you can use the Cambridge Z88 Diary application to organise your engagements, and plan your time. It demonstrates how to:

Enter engagements into the Diary
Search for and list out all engagements relating a particular thing
Using multiple Diaries do organize engagements differently.
Use the Diary with the Calendar popdown to find any date very quickly

Entering the Diary

Before using the Diary, make sure you have set the correct time and date on the Clock popdown, as described in Section One.

You can enter the Diary in either of two equivalent ways, whichever you find most convenient:

Either: go into the Index, by pressing the key, and select the Diary from the APPLICATIONS list by pressing the and keys until the Diary item is highlighted. Then press the key to create a Diary application instance. Using this method you can create several Diary applications (OZ V4.2 and later).

Diary Select

Or: type D. You can do this from anywhere, even another application. This will create a Diary application (if none exists), or jump back to an already running Diary.

Once you have made entries in the Diary, it will appear on the list of SUSPENDED ACTIVITIES in the Index, but there can only be one copy of the Diary.

Type CT to go to today's date, and the Diary screen display similar to the diagram shown below will appear:

Diary - UK

This gives you a page for today's date, onto which you can type information in any form you like. The information is stored permanently in the diary, and you will be able to refer back to it on another occasion.

Making a Diary entry

Try typing the following appointments onto today's page in the Diary, pressing the and keys where indicated to lay out the lines neatly:

Work: 10.00 Sales meeting Simon: 12.30 Pick up from station

Simon appointment
You can actually lay out information in the Diary however you like, but it is a good idea to label your appointments, as in the example above, because you will then be able to locate everything in a particular category by searching for the appropriate label. An example of this is given below.

Moving between days

You can move between days in the Diary by typing

to go to the next day

to go to the previous day

Try moving to the day after tomorrow, by typing twice.

Then enter the following appointment:

Work: 11.00 Present report to Board

Searching for Diary entries

The Diary provides a powerful Search command which enables you to find and list out all appointments in a particular category.

As an illustration, the following example provides a list of all appointments relating to Work.

First select the BLOCKS menu, by pressing the key until BLOCKS is highlighted on the menu bar at the left-hand side of the screen. Then move the cursor to highlight Search on the menu, and press to give the command.

The following prompts will be displayed:

------------ STRING TO SEARCH FOR ---------

EQUATE UPPER AND LOWER CASE ........... Yes
SEARCH ONLY MARKED BLOCK .............. No 
PRODUCE LIST .......................... No
PRINT LIST ............................ No

Below the prompt STRING TO SEARCH FOR type

Work:

Then press three times to move the cursor to the line

PRODUCE LIST .......................... No

and type Y to alter the value of the option to Yes.

Now press , since the other options are not relevant, and the appointments will be listed:

Thursday 17th March 1987 
Work:   10.00 Sales meeting

Saturday 19th March 1987 
Work:   11.00 Present report to board

Of course, in your case the dates will be different, corresponding to the information you have used.

Using multiple diaries

OZ V4.2 and later allows you to create multiple diaries from the Index. Select the Diary from the APPLICATIONS list by pressing the and keys until the Diary item is highlighted. Then press the key to create another Diary application instance. Using the D hot-key will alternate activation between all the running diaries. This will assist you in organizing your engagements differently, for example by entering personal notes in one and work-related notes in another:

The "Your Ref." column in the Index reflects the file-name used inside Diary to either save or load Diary entries. Equally this filename is displayed inside Diary in the right-hand side window, which is very handy when you have multiple diaries, making it easier to identify where you are:

Using the Calendar and Diary together

By calling the Calendar pop-down from within the Diary, you can move quickly between different dates, and the Diary will then give the page for the date you have selected.

For example, having forgotten a friend's birthday on the 17th March, you decide to make an entry in the Diary to make sure you do not forget it the following year. Use the following procedure to find the right day very quickly:

17th March