To use Pimlical with a Palm OS device, you must install the V-6.2 Palm Desktop. As of the date of this release, the link to that file on Palm's website is: http://www.palm.com/us/support/downloads/windesk62.html. Palm's V-6.2 desktop states that it only works with newer Palm devices (i.e. the devices with the newer PIM databases: Calendar, Contacts, Tasks and Memos). However, the install routine in Pimlical will automatically set up the Palm desktop to work with the older style legacy databases (Datebook, Addressbook, ToDo and MemoPad) if you select the option to sync with the older style databases. It is strongly advised that you install the Palm desktop V-6.2 and get it properly working first and synching a few times before installing Pimlical. If the Palm desktop and hotsync is not working properly, then it's unlikely that Pimlical will work properly either as it uses the information in the Palm Desktop database. Palm's conduit software does not support USB sync on 64-bit OS's - but Access released 64-bit USB drivers, so you can continue to sync to your handheld even with 64-bit Vista or Win7:  Synching via USB on 64-bit versions of Windows: https://www.PimlicoSoftware.com/Palm%20Garnet%2064%20bit%20USB%20Drivers%20-%20DVR_WINX64_USB_GN4-GN5_20110322.zip and for 32-bit versions of Windows: https://www.PimlicoSoftware.com/Palm%20Garnet%2032%20bit%20USB%20Drivers%20-%20DVR_WINX32_USB_GN4-GN5_20110322.zip If you are a DateBk6 user... It's important to remember that Pimlical is an entirely new calendar application - it is not just a 'port' of DateBk6 to the desktop, but rather a new application written from scratch - first appearing as a windows desktop. In its first release, it is positioned as a windows version that reads the Palm Desktop data so that it can function as a "Datebk6 desktop for windows" since it knows about the DateBk6 tagged note field and can display DateBk6's custom fonts, colors, standard icons, etc. and handles floating events, integrated display of tasks, etc. If you are a long-time DateBk user, don't assume that you can't do all the same things in Pimlical! It's just that you might have to do them in a slightly different manner, or perhaps spend a minute or two setting things up first! Look carefully at how filters and preferences work. This is different from DateBk6, but in most cases can accomplish the same end result. A filter is something like a saved view, except that it does not necessarily come with its own set of custom preferences (although you can do that if you want in Pimlical). On installation,. Pimlical displays the standard DateBk icon set. If you have custom icons - see the section Converting your Custom Icon Collection, below. Category attributes such as color, font and icon need to be set up in Pimlical independently, to match DateBk6 - go into Category Management in the Options menu and right-click the color, font or icon column for the designated category to set that attribute. There are Pimlical features not in DateBk6, such as the ability to handle up to 255 categories and assign more than one category to an event, or to group items. This information is not lost when you sync to DateBk6 as Pimlical will write a tag into the note field to preserve that information. These Pimlical tags are hidden in the very latest version of DateBk6 - http://www.PimlicoSoftware.com/datebk6-v61b-s0.zip. The print function (File menu) will basically print out what is on the screen with the useful ability to substitute different fonts for the printout. Using the Palm Desktop Like the Palm Desktop, Pimlical does not lock the Palm database while it is running, so you can in fact update the Palm database while Pimlical is running, but this is probably best avoided! When Pimlical goes to write the database, it will warn you if the database has been modified by some other application in the interim and ask you if you want to write out the changes anyway (if you don't, you can always use the Exit WITHOUT Saving File option in the Special menu). If you do write out the changes, Pimlical's changes will prevail on any record that was modified on both platforms. Otherwise, changes or records added in the Palm desktop will generally not be lost when Pimlical writes out the calendar file (i.e. it only updates the database for changes made in Pimlical -- it does not rewrite the entire database - however, newly entered events not yet hotsynced will get overwritten). This warning can be suppressed with a Preference option if desired. Also note that if you close out the Palm Desktop AFTER you close Pimlical, all changes in Pimlical will be lost because the Palm desktop rewrites the entire database. There is no auto-save at this time in Pimlical (but most likely will be very shortly). If you hotsync while Pimlical is running, just use the Calendar Refresh command to see any new changes made by hotsync. Hot Synching Unlike the Palm desktop, Pimlical, while it is running, does not get a notification that hotsync is about to run, and therefore does not write out its database. So before you hotsync, press CTRL/S or use File | Save to ensure database is up to date. After a hotsync, press CTRL/H or use File | Refresh... to read in any new synced information. Obviously, there is no issue if Pimlical is not running when you do a hotsync. Or - starting with release 0.1.79, you can set up the preference: AutoRefreshInterval to a value in minutes at which time, Pimlical will automatically check to see if any change has been made to the calendar database and do an auto-refresh - it will also write out the database if any change has been made in Pimlical. Normally, this is quite fast, so a value of 1-5 minutes for this is very reasonable. Setting up multiple users when using the Palm Desktop If there is more than one user defined to use the Palm desktop, the installation routine will display a dropdown list of all users in a separate dialog. Just click OK to install for the default user. To install for another user, run just the PimlicalInstall-Part2.exe file (you do not run the full install) and select a different user than the default user. This will set up the profile for a second user. The only other step is to set up a launch icon for this other user(s) - CTRL/Click and drag the default launch icon to a new location on the desktop. Right-click the icon, select Properties and on the Target line, after the ...pimlical.exe", append a space, the text -userfile: and then the name of this other user (which is actually their HotSyncUser name). See manual appendix A for more details on this. For example, if the other person's user name was DavidH, the target line would read: "C:\Program Files\Pimlico\pimlical\Pimlical.exe" "-userfile:DavidH" Converting your custom icon collection First - are you tracking Icons by resource ID in DateBk? You should be and will need to be to convert the collection. If you aren't, or not sure, go into Advanced Settings in DateBk and see if that box is checked. If not, you will need to run Icon Manager (which you can download from any Palm Software archive) and use the option to Renumber Icon IDs... in the IDs menu to renumber them from 0 and then save the file and check the box in DateBk to track icons by resource ID. Next, you will need to run PimlicalIconToolSetup.exe program which was installed in the default installation program path (normally: C:\Program Files\Pimlico\Pimlical) and run that to install the icon conversion utility. Launch the Icon Tool and tap on the button with the three dots to the right of Input File and navigate to the backup folder where your icon collection is stored as a PRC type file (usually this folder is something like: C:\Program Files\Palm\{HotSyncUser name}\Backup or with V-6.2 - C:\Documents And Settings\{windows user name}\My Documents\Palm OS Desktop\{Palm user name}\backup). The default filename for the icon collection is: Icons-DateBk.prc. Then click on [...] button to right of Root of Bitmap Output Folders and select a folder where you want the icons to be extracted to (makes no difference, but do remember where you put these files!). Then click on Extract Icons button to convert the icon collection to individual files in PGN format. Finally, launch Pimlical and go into Icon Management in the Options menu and then tap the Import button. Navigate to the folder where you converted all the icons. Select the appropriate sub-folder - they are sorted by bitmap density - you'll probably want either the 8-Bit D72 or the 8-Bit D144I  folder. Select any file in that folder (doesn't matter which one as all will be imported) and tap the Open button. All your icons are then displayed and imported. Using Google Calendars By default, when you read in a Google Calendar, while it is displayed in Pimlical along with other events, those items are not stored in the main database file that the Palm desktop and conduit software use. So those items after being read will not by default appear on your handheld. You can, however, attach a Google Calendar event to the main database by assigning it to a category within Pimlical as well as leaving it assigned to its Google Calendar category. If you remove the Google Calendar category, the event is no longer associated with Google Calendar and if you re-read that Google calendar, that event will appear twice (once in each category). If you leave it assigned to the Google category, however, subsequent syncs with Google will update that event normally. Events from Google associated with a local category will then also appear on the handheld and you can update such events in anyone of the three places (Google calendar, Pimlical/Palm Desktop, Palm handheld) and it will subsequently appear (after syncs) in the other two places. Caution needs to be applied though as if you update items on all three platforms and then sync, you will end up with a confusing situation (Palm conduit insists on duplicating events, while Pimlical can either leave such events unsynced or apply an override rule). It's best to have a strategy to only update Google calendar events on one platform as a normal plan of action. Anything you read from Google Calendar only goes by default into a category with a name that has the G_ prefix followed by the calendar name itself (possibly changed a bit to be a 'legal' category name). When you read a Google Calendar, it automatically gets a category with the name G_{calendarname} - where the calendar name may be changed a bit to be a legal category name (i.e. removing spaces, etc.). So if you have a Google Calendar called 'Larry' - it will get the category 'G_Larry' So if you want to see Google calendar items ALSO appear on your handheld, or in the Palm Desktop or want to have them in the palm desktop database because you are syncing that to something else, you need to assign a "local" category - i.e. a regular category in Pimlical) to the event. You can do that either one at a time (just add in the local category), or to a block of items (select a bunch of items manually or use Advanced Find) and then in the DisplayResults dialog, use the CHANGE function, select JUST the category you want to add to all those items and nothing else and check the ADD checkbox and that will add the local category to all those items. OR, if you want EVERYTHING to be in Pimlical's local database as well, use the preference option: AssignPimlicalCategoryToGC in the [Google Calendar] section in preferences and set it to TRUE. Then make sure you have a local category in Pimlical with a name that PERFECTLY matches the Google Category except for the prefix. In the above case, the calendar 'Larry' had a category name of G_Larry, so you would create a category in Pimlical (Options | Category Management) with the name 'Larry'. Then when you read the calendar, every single item will appear in the category G_Larry (the Google Calendar) and in Larry (the local category). It may be a bit confusing to some people, but it has definite benefits to work this way. It makes it possible to read and sync Google Calendars on the desktop WITHOUT forcing all of them to appear on the handheld (which would be the case otherwise).