| I got a new Android
phone - how do I move Pimlical to the new
phone? |
1.
Connect old phone to desktop with USB cable and copy the Pimlical
folder (always include all sub-folders!) to the desktop. If you were
using V-3.7.x the Pimlical folder will be off the root as /Pimlical. If
V-4.x was running, the Pimlical folder is in Scoped Storage:
.../Android/data/com.pimlicosoftware.PimlicalA/files/Pimlical .
2.
Connect new phone to Desktop with USB Cable and copy the saved, Pimlical folder from the desktop to /Pimlical on your
phone (i.e. where the ‘old’ Pimlical folder was, off the root of the
filing system (regardless of where it was originally copied from).
2.
Install and Launch P/A on the new phone, and in the initial Install
dialog with the title PIMLICAL NEEDS TO COPY YOUR FILES, tap the SETUP
button to move all your database, preferences, files from the Pimlical/
folder to the new location for the Pimlical folder in Scoped Storage
(.../Android/data/com.pimlicosoftware.PimlicalA/files/Pimlical).
If you do not see the initial install dialog, UNINSTALL Pimlical on the new phone (do not
check the box to preserve your data), then reinstall and you will then
see the initial install dialog and can tap the SETUP button.
If
your ReferenceID has changed on your new phone, you will need to email
that new ReferenceID to Tech Support so you can get properly licensed
(and with the appropriate subscription if you have one).
|
| I
have the latest
version of Pimlical/Android but it just exits with NOT
LICENSED or TRIAL VERSION. |
If the version you installed ends with -G (i.e. like
V-3.5.14-G)
this means you purchased it from the Google PlayStore. Google
pulled Pimlical from the Playstore because they keep on changing the
rules on what is permissible and what is not. Pimlical used a
permission that Google recommended a couple of years ago, but now
decided was too dangerous and promptly pulled all Apps that had it. So
the permission was removed, but then found they were also pulling all
Apps that were not compiled with the latest AOS12 libraries, so the App
was recompiled again and 2 days of work spent trying to
figure out all the changes required to be compliant with AOS12. By the
time that was done, they changed it to requiring the AOS13
libraries.
Worse,
Google has apparently
decided that if an App is no longer listed in the Playstore, they could
just erase all information about it in their database including all the
licensing and purchase information(!) the result being that they would
ALSO no longer permit the App to be licensed.
At this point,
enough is enough, and Pimlico has decided that ALL future development
of the Pimlical Calendar App will only take place with the Direct
Download version, especially because features like Set Link to File and
features that use File Navigation are then no longer crippled by
Google's restrictive rules. V-4.0.x is only available as
a Direct Download. Information about getting the direct download version is at https://www.PimlicoSoftware.com
If the version number ends in -D,
then you had originally purchased
Pimlical/Android directly from Pimlico. In that case, you will not be
licensed unless
the ReferenceID displayed
in menu | About matches the information in Pimlico's registration
database. Go into Menu | About and look at
the ReferenceID and send that to Pimlico Tech
Support along with your full name, address and if possible, the
original email address you used when you purchased Pimlical. It will
then take some 24-48 hours for new license files to be uploaded, so try
again in some 24-48 hours by going into menu | About (you may need to
exit and go back again in to
menu | About to see the change take effect.
If you have no email account on the device, your ReferenceID will
typically be the
Device ID. The ReferenceID
is only displayed in later versions of
Pimlical/Android (2.1.35 or later).
|
| HELP! I just upgraded from V-3.7 to V-4.0 (or later) and ALL my data and preferences have disappeared!!
|
First,
nothing has been lost. When this upgrade is made, P/A now has to
conform to the new Google requirements for the Android OS which require
ALL Apps to store their data in a special sand-boxed area underneath
{root}\Android\Data\. So the Pimlical folder has now moved to
{root}\Android\Data\com.pimlicosoftware.PimlicalA\files\Pimlical.
V-4.00.x of Pimlical/Android will automatically migrate your data (just
confirm in that information dialog on launch that you wish to do that by tapping the SETUP button).
If you choose to temporarily uninstall PimlicalA prior to a reinstall, make certain
you check the box to retain Pimlical's data, as otherwise, AOS will not
only uninstall PimlicalA, but also permanently delete all the local
data and preferences! In general, it's probably a good idea to retain
the old Pimlical folder as backup for a while. Also menu | About
will now display the new, full path to the Pimlical folder in "scoped storage".
For even more detailed, step by step instructions, reference this document.
|
|
| My AntiVirus Software is complaining that PimlicalA is "dangerous" or "suspicious" |
Just
ignore that erroneous message. Many badly written AV programs use
heuristics (a fancy word for supposedly "intelligent" guesses) to try
and figure out if programs are a problem or not. There is no way to
know why this erroneous message appears. It might be that some Java
library that Pimlical uses was also used by some malware, and the AV
program then just assumes that ANY program that uses that java library
must also be a problem (which is obviously a ridiculous assumption). Or it maybe that the Company flags all apps that are not in its proprietary database as being "suspicious".
|
| AutoSync is failing with System
Error or other Error Message |
Autosync
can fail for a number of reasons (sometimes the dropbox server seems
unavailable(?!). Sometimes the contents of the calendar on the server
get corrupted because of an interrupted file copy, etc. However, as of August 2022, there is a new issue:
Dropbox
no longer permits applications (like Pimlical) to store the login
credentials and re-use them. So you have to log in fresh to dropbox
every time. This means that on both the desktop and the phone, you have
to RESET AUTOSYNC first before using it (P/D: Special menu, P/A: Debug
Menu). V-4.x.x of P/A and P/D both have a preference option AlwaysResetBeforeAutoSync that will do this automatically for you.
Unfortunately,
since this was a security measure by
dropbox, there is no way to defeat it or work around it.
|
| Alarms are not reliable, floating update not taking place, Widget is not refreshing, other odd things happening |
Make sure that you have disabled battery
optimization in the Android System Settings. Pimlical has many
background tasks and activities, and if battery optimization is
enabled, the Android OS will prevent Pimlical from executing those
tasks!
|
| No
Google/Android calendars show up when I go into menu | Select Calendar,
but they ARE there in the built-in Calendar App |
You have inadvertently denied Pimlical
permission to access your Android calendars, most likely because of
some glitch while installing the upgrade, or because of a
misunderstanding as to why Pimlical is asking for access to your
calendar. Go into system settings | Apps | PimlicalA | permissions and
make sure that ALL permissions have been granted to Pimlical/Android.
Then force-stop and relaunch Pimlical and your
calendars should appear. If that fails to resolve the issue, UNINSTALL
Pimlical, then download and REINSTALL Pimlical as that completely
resets the OS permissions for PImlical. Note that when you
reinstall, you WILL be asked for permission to access three items - you
MUST grant permission to Pimlical or it can not run. If it still fails,
try force-stopping Pimlical, then manually turn OFF all four
permissions (in Settings | Apps | PimlicalApp | Permissinos), then
uninstall Pimlical, reboot your Android device
and then reinstall Pimlical and grant all the requested permissions.
|
| With the latest release, a
Shopping Cart Icon shows up in what should be blank spots in Edit dialog |
You
have an old version of the Android OS, V-6.0.1 and it appears there's a
bug either in the compatibility libraries that Google provides for
Android-11 (with which P/A has to be compiled), or in an
incompatibility between those libraries and V-6.0.1 of the Android OS
(specifically, google is clipping off the high order bit of an 8-bit
signed byte so instead of 1111 1111 (-1) it presents 0111 1111 (Decimal
127). Since it is not possible to fix Google's software, the only
workaround (imperfect, but better than nothing) is to install
a custom Icon collection that blanks out the Shopping Cart
Icon (#127). After downloading this file:
1. Force-Stop
Pimlical/Android
2. Delete
the IconArchive.dat file in the Pimlical folder on the phone
3. MOVE
the file you downloaded from the above link to the Pimlical folder on
the phone
4. RENAME
the file to IconArchive.dat
5. Relaunch
Pimlical
|
| DirectSync is not working on my
new Moto phone - but identical settings worked fine previously! Is this
a bug in the phone? |
Yes
it is. There is a bug in that phone the most obvious symptom of which
is that the SEND TO: dialog fails to display the IP address and port
number that you set in the preferences in P/A (obviously check that HttpAddressesForSync
and PortNumberForNetworkSync
are set properly first). The apparent solution to this is to force stop
your "Wall paper App" which is preinstalled on that phone
(unfortunately, you cannot remove this app). The dialog will still be
blank, but then DirectSync should at least work. Hopefully, Motorola
will fix this bug at some point. This flaw is not present on any other
standard Android phones. See this message
thread on the Pimlical Forum for more information.
|
| The
List (or Day, Day+) View is blank (new issue in V-3.5.29) or
only displays 1 day |
V-3.5.29
of Pimlical is now compiled with the Android OS 4.1 libraries and
there's a bug in the OS whereby Out Of Memory Exceptions are not
reported properly, and as a result, Pimlical does not reduce the number
of days in that view to match available memory. Solution is to either
(a) reduce the pointsize of that view (Preference: ListViewFont)
or reduce the number of days in that view (Menu | Views | Long-press
the List+ button). Note that depending on the density of events, you
may need to step it back a bit more than the minimum value in order to
avoid some other list page not displaying. If an Out Of Memory
condition occurs, Pimlical automatically sets the List View to display
1 day to ensure the view displays - you can then advance that number to
a value which still results in the list view being displayed
consistently.
V-3.5.44
and later will request more memory to be allocated to Pimlical/Android,
and that should provide some relief for this issue for most users.
|
| Help! I just installed P/A and ALL my events have disappeared!! |
First
of all, nothing is lost. Most likely, due to a hiccough in the Android
OS while upgrading (or possibly due to an inadvertent user error), the
new Permissions feature
that
now has to be supported for OS 6.0 and later is interfering. Go into
System Settings | Apps | PimlicalA | Permissions and make certain that
you have granted permission to External Storage, Calendar, and Contacts
(Phone permission is only needed if you intend to use Pimlical to dial
phone numbers). If ANY one of those three permissions was not granted,
that's your problem, and fixing that should take care of the issue. If
not, try uninstalling and reinstalling Pimlical (you will note it asks
for those three permissions on startup). You may also need to go back
into menu | Select Calendars to make sure the calendars you are using
are properly selected. If you just installed V-3.9 or V-4.0 - see the second FAQ above.
|
| I
now constantly see an Alarm Clock icon on the Status bar - how do I
remove it? |
Pimlical
was forced to switch to use the AlarmClock function in V-3.7.15 because
Google is apparently unwilling/unable to fix the bugs in the RTC Clock
alarm. However, as a side-effect of that, the
Android OS now always displays that icon because Pimlical always has an
alarm set for the next event with an alarm. To remove that icon, google
for how do i get rid of
the alarm clock icon on {device}? where
{device} is your brand/model of phone (there are many different
procedures depending on what phone you have). The AlarmClock function
is also used to trigger the advance of Floating Events (AdvanceFloatingEventsTime),
so even if you have no future events with alarms, you would still see
an alarm set at 2am, unless you disable
the advance by setting that preference to midnight (00:00/12:00a).
However, if you do that, floating events with alarms set to trigger you
first look at Pimlical (which will force the advance), will not go off because
the date has not yet been advanced on them, so this is not recommended.
On
most phones you can Open your Notification Panel, press and hold the
Settings Icon for a couple of seconds (until it starts spinning) and
then release. That adds the option System
UI Tuner to the system section and there's an option there
to hide the Alarm icon. Samsung (as usual) inexplicably disabled this
ability, so you will need to do this with an application from your
desktop - Click Here
to download a zip file for windows - unpack contents to any folder,
connect phone to desktop and enable USB Debugging in Developer Options
(to see Developer
Options, Go into [Settings]. Tap
on [About device] and repeatedly tap on the [Build Number] until a
toast notification comes up stating you have enabled developer
options). Then click on System UI Tuner.exe to launch it and the System
UI Tuner window will appear on your desktop where you can then change
some of the settings (not all changes are supported though, but the
alarm icon can be removed this way).
You can also choose to go back to the older (but less reliable) RTC
CLock alarm by setting the preference: UseAlarmClockForAlarms
to False (default value is True). Pimlical will then use the prior
alarm mechanism which does not cause the Android OS to put that icon in
the status bar. However, if you contact Tech Support complaining about
unreliability in the Alarm function, you will of course be told to set
this preference back to True as that is the precise reason Pimlical
switched to using the Alarm Clock function.
|
| Some
Alarms are getting missed now |
To get alarms to work properly and
reliably, you must first
be using V-3.7.15 or later
of Pimlical/Android as that version now uses the more reliable OS
AlarmClock feature to set alarms (previously, the Android OS RTC alarm
feature would fail on occasion). Also you may need to Whitelist
PimlicalCalendar so that it is not
optimized as "optimization"
means that the OS is permitted to change the behavior of
alarms (!). You should also allow Pimlical to run in the background.
Finally, a "swipe-close" on Pimlical may act as a
force-close in which case any pending alarm set by Pimlical gets
canceled (some phones do this, some don't).
Android
10 appears to have a new issue - it seems to no longer properly support
the feature of allowing applications to re-launch themselves after
boot-up in order to reschedule alarms. If you see this problem on your
phone, for now at least, just launch Pimlical one time after
re-starting your phone.
Android
OS 10 (and 11 and 12) still have a bug whereby when you change the
preference for SnoozeNotificationSound, FloatNotificationSound and
CustomNotificationSound, you must also use the CLEAR DATA option
in the system APP settings for Pimlical in order to have those changes
recognized by the Android OS. Remember that on an update, your sounds
may change/relocate, and become inaccessible to Pimlical (phone turns
on but no sound appears - also, usually creating an error file
referencing createAlarmNotification2()...). The Clear Data option will
also fix that problem too.
|
| I tap the screen but often
nothing happens - this also happens on a long-press on an item, why is
Pimlical ignoring it? |
If you have a pretty high resolution
screen, you are probably moving
your finger on the screen as you tap/press it. So the Android OS
interprets the gesture as a Fling
or Scroll operation
instead. The latest release of Pimlical/Android now has a special
preference: FingerSlipThreshold
with a default value of -1. That is changed by Pimlical to a
value that should be appropriate for your phone and avoid this issue,
but if you are still experiencing an issue, try adjusting this to a
higher value and see if that helps. What this preference does is tell
Pimlical that
in a Fling
or Scroll
operation, if the finger only moved a small distance, then it should be
interpreted as a tap or press. This is especially worth doing on a
device with an HD screen (and very definitely with 4k screens!).
Pimlical is probably one of very few applications that simultaneously
supports taps, long-presses, scrolls and Flings on the main screen,
which is why you might not see this issue in most simple applications.
Some devices (like Samsung) seem to have a bigger problem with this
than other devices, perhaps because of custom modifications to the
Android OS(?).
|
| I
am losing preferences and seeing them unexpectedly reset/seeing error
messages, etc. |
Look
in the Pimlical folder for error files (files that have the word
'error' in the filename or extension). If you see error messages that
contains messages referring to a
rename
problem such as: Failed to rename temporary file
to current!, this usually
indicates you are having an issue with badly
written antivirus software. The problem is that when Pimlical closes
out a temporary file,
before it can rename it, some other process leaps in and locks
the file so it can scan it for viruses, and by locking the file,
Pimlical is then unable to rename the file. This is, of course,
inappropriate behavior - as no application should be stepping in and
locking another application's files (!). The antivirus program is
assuming,
that since the file has been closed, the application won't need to look
at it for a while and that should be long enough for it to quickly scan
the file, but that's a completely erroneous assumption and leads to
this problem as
it is quite common to write a temporary file out first (to be sure it
gets written properly) and then delete the original and rename the
temporary file. It is also a stupid idea as if an application is
inserting viruses into its data files, it's not going to be so
incredibly dumb as to leave it out in the open where it's obviously
detectable.
Anyway, the latest releases of Pimlical attempt to
recover from this by repeating the rename operation if the main data
file is missing and a temporary file exists - it might be possible to
improve the workaround a bit, but the only rational solution is to turn
off
any "live-scanning" or
'real-time scanning" feature until such time as the company rewrites it
properly so it does not interfere with a running application.
|
| My local calendar just
disappeared, why? and how do i restore it? |
First,
to restore your local calendar, go into menu | Select Local calendar
and tap the RESTORE button and pick an earlier restore point - for more
information on backup and restore - see the helpful video in menu |
Help & USage Tips | online manual.
Second, do you have Anti-Virus software installed? Several AntiVirus
programs are badly
designed and interfere with the normal operation of Pimlical/Android
(in particular, they are instantly locking closed files, thereby
preventing P/A from renaming files). Programs such as Avast, should
likely be removed until such time as the developer updates them to
function properly in a multi-tasking environment (the value of such
programs with the android OS has yet to be confirmed anyway according
to most reviewers).
Finally, look in the Pimlical folder for any
error files (files with a TXT extension and usually the word 'error' as
part of the filename, such as UncaughtException_ErrorXXXX.txt) and send
those files here for analysis if you see any.
|
|
Items entered in Pimlical/Android are not
appearing in Google Calendar OR How do I set the default calendar for
new events? |
|
Pimlical/Android by default uses the same/identical database as the
built-in calendar application, so the first step is to make sure that a
newly created item in the built-in Android calendar application syncs
to Google, as if that is not working, Pimlical/Android won't work
either (make sure you have sync enabled, etc.).
Second, did you assign the item created in
P/A to a Google calendar? By default, P/A will use the first calendar
in the database and on some phones, there is a local calendar (called
things like MyCalendar PC-Sync etc.) which does not sync. Make certain
in the Edit dialog that you have a Google calendar selected. You can
set Pimlical/Android to always create an item in a specific calendar by
setting the preference DefaultApptCategory (and
DefaultFloatCategory, DefaultTaskCategory)
to the name of the calendar you want to use (with earlier versions of
P/A you had to type in the calendar name, prefixed with A_ , but all
newer versions provide a selection list for this function.
Third - did you click on Refresh in Google
Calendar to be sure the item is missing? If you still have a problem,
ensure you have the latest release of Pimlical/Android and if it still
fails, contact tech support at the link at the top of the page.
|
|
The Date Picker (or Time Picker) isn't displaying all the digits
properly |
There's
a calculation error in some versions of the Android OS that can cause
the default fontsize to be just slightly too big. To fix this, just
adjust the preference DatePickerFont
(or TimePickerFont)
to a slightly smaller fontsize.
|
| How
do I set up an event to repeat on more than one day in a week? |
The
answer is to realize you are wanting an even that repeats on a WEEKLY
basis, and if you setup a weekly repeat, you will see there are
checkboxes that allow you to select which days of the week you want the
event to repeat on. So if you want the event to repeat on weekend days
only, just check the boxes for Saturday and Sunday, etc.
|
| How
do I set up Pimlical so it always opens with today's view? |
This
is a very basic question, so we recommend that you read through the
online manual (menu | Help & Usage Tips | Online Manual) as
this
indicates there's likely a lot of functionality you are overlooking.
The simplest way to make this change is to go into menu | Views and
pick an item in the dropdown list for the Startup View (all views start
with today unless you pick the option to preserve the last view and
date). For more control, edit a filter and make the appropriate
adjustments in the Repeat Rule & Views Pane (last pane with
repeat
icon) and the Date Rule Pane (calendar icon).
Keep in mind that
there is no concept of exiting an application in the Android OS. You
may THINK you are 'exiting' the program by hitting the back button,
home button or even using menu | Exit in Pimlical, but the program
remains running -- all that happens is that the Android OS displays the
Home Screen, or last viewed application. So when you subsequently tap
the Pimlical icon in the Home Screen, you are not launching the
application - rather you are just switching back to it (as you would
say in Windows by using Alt/Tab). However, since most users think they
are 'exiting' the application, Pimlical does try and simulate this by
setting a flag so that when it gets re-activated, it acts as if it is
being launched and obeys the startup view.
|
|
Google Calendar syncs some, but not all
items, in the calendar to Android Calendar that Pimlical/Android uses |
By default, the
Android calendar sync routines do not sync the entire contents of each
Google Calendar. It appears that older (more than approximately one
month?) non-recurring events do not get synced. You can temporarily
force the Android calendar sync routine to sync everything by going
into Pimlical Desktop, selecting all items in that calendar in Advanced
Find, then clicking on Find then Shift
and leaving the shift value at 0 and click on OK.
That will mark all items as recently modified. However, it appears on
some Android phones, this strategy only works for a short period of
time.
|
|
How do I get a link to the latest
version of Pimlical/Android?
|
Send an email to the Tech Support email
address: SWSupport@PimlicoSoftware.com
with this subject line: Pimlical/Android
Download Request and
you will get an email back usually within a few hours with a link to
the latest release. You must send the email from the email address that
you originally used to purchased the application with in order to get
the download link. If you no longer have that information, email tech
support directly and try and provide as much identifying information as
possible to locate your original order.
|
| I
have the latest
version of Pimlical/Android but it just exits with NOT
LICENSED or TRIAL VERSION. |
|
You will not be
licensed unless
the ReferenceID displayed
in menu | About matches the information in Pimlico's registration
database. Go into Menu | About and look at
the ReferenceID and send that to Pimlico Tech
Support along with your full name, address and if possible, the
original email address you used when you purchased Pimlical. It will
then take some 24-48 hours for new license files to be uploaded, so try
again in some 24-48 hours by going into menu | About to see the change take effect.
If you have no email account on the device, your ReferenceID will
typically be the
Device ID. You can not change your ReferenceID.
|
| Text is truncated and mangled in
the Edit Dialog and several other dialogs |
At
this time, Pimlical does not cater to the LARGE font setting in the
System Settings (Settings | My Device | Display | Font Size) because it
would require a complete redesign of several dialogs which would also
make the information much less accessible for the vast majority of
users who use the Normal or smaller settings. There are no immediate
plans to address this issue. Set the Font Size to Normal to confirm
that was the issue with your device. If it was already set to Normal,
contact Tech Support.
|
| I can not control the Alarm
Volume setting, or alarms sound even when all sound volume settings are
turned off, or no alarms sound at all |
Some Android phones have no setting for
controlling the Alarm Volume (Bug? DDD? (Dumb Design Decision).
Although the standard Android OS has such a control, many
Samsung
phones have no control over it. In that case, set the preference: UseRingtoneVolumeForAlarms
to true and then you can control the Alarm volume by adjusting the
Ringtone Volume.
|
|
DirectSync Seems
to be losing track of changes made to Floating Events (ex. items marked
as complete are coming back as incomplete, etc.)
|
|
If you advance floating events on both
platforms, it is essential that you set the preference FloatAdvanceSetsDirtyFlag
to false. Otherwise, whichever platform advances floating
events at the latest time will prevail and changes made to the floating
event on the other platform will be overwritten.
|
|
DirectSync can't find my phone as a
drive when I mount it with USB cable - or can I sync via network
instead of USB?
|
|
Some Android devices have Phone
Storage which is internal to the phone and which does not
appear as a PC drive to many applications (including Pimlical) when
mounted via USB cable. In that case, we recommend that you use an app
like WebSharing (available on GooglePlay) which can
mount the Phone Storage as a network drive that Pimlical can see. This
also works well in general for syncing from P/A on any Android device
to P/D and appears to be fast and reliable.
|
| Pimlical does not launch at all and
indicates it needs to be restarted |
| If you see this error
immediately after your device has been upgraded to Android 4.x from an
earlier version of the Android OS, the most likely explanation is that
you are using an old version of Pimlical/Android released
before this new version of the OS. Android 4.x is not
backwards compatible with respect to the Android calendar, so you must
install a version of P/A released after that updated appeared. Go to
your private download link to download the latest release of P/A, or if
you have forgotten it/lost it, send an email to technical support with
the subject line Pimlical/Android Download Request.
Otherwise, if you see this error when you
try and run Pimlical/Android for the first time, this usually indicates
that either (a) you have an incompatible Android device (see minimum
requirements), or (b) you have something highly unusual in your If
calendar that is causing an issue. In the latter case, contact
technical support right away, and preferably arrange for the email
address:
PimlicoSoftware@gmail.com to be granted access to the
calendar that is causing the problem.
If this problem occurs after Pimlical has
been running previously ok, it indicates that some major corruption is
present. The fastest way to get back up and running is to attach the
phone to the desktop and rename the Pimlical folder
to say Pimlical-Problem. Then relaunch Pimlical
which will rebuild all the standard, default preference settings. By
renaming the folder, you will then be able to communicate with
Technical Support and the cause of the failure can be determined.
|
|
Why is every word capitalized in the title
field of an event? |
Everything like this is almost always controlled by a preference
setting. You may find it useful at some point to just peruse all the
preference settings by going through each section of preferences and
scrolling through all of them to see the wealth of things that you can
change to customize this application to meet your needs. For example,
by default every word is capitalized for an event, but the preference:
AutoCapitalizeEventTitle can be set to false if you don't
like that behavior.
|
| Pimlical seems sluggish when
moving from view to view or day to day |
If
you have a lot of very large note fields, and a large number of records
in the database, trying to display the note field in the main views may
be the problem on slower devices, so try setting the preference IncludeNote to
false.
|
|
How do you scroll the display in the
Day/Day+ views? |
Scroll by pressing
down at top center of the screen and then drag down the screen - an
up/down stroke in the center of the screen causes the display to
scroll. In most cases it is not an issue unless you are using very
small time slots (such as 15min) or toggled the display to show all 24
hours of timeslots even though nothing is present in them. If you do
that, you can minimize the issue by selecting a briefer duration
between the Start time and End time for the day in preferences. Also
keep in mind there is a menu option to toggle the display of untimed
events on and off as usually the problem is a large number of floating
events at the beginning of Todays' schedule.
|
| Items entered in
Pimlical/Android are not appearing in Google Calendar OR How do I set
the default calendar for new events? |
Make sure that the item is marked as being in a Google Calendar in the
Edit Dialog. By default, P/A will put items in the first calendar it
finds, and if this calendar is a local or other calendar (such as PC
Sync, or My calendar), it won't appear in Google Calendar. You can set
a permanent default for the calendar that P/A uses by going into Menu |
Preferences and changing the preference DefaultApptCategory
(or DefaultFloatCategory for floats) to the name
of the Android calendar prefixed with A_ (so if the calendar is 'My
Appts', set this preference to 'A_My Appts'). if you are using
Pimlical's local calendar, you would just set it to the category in the
local calendar.
|
| I have just upgraded, but
cannot see the new hi-rez icons which are supposedly in this upgrade. |
When upgrading, your existing icon collection is never
overwritten because you might have customized it. If you have not
customized your collection, you can safely delete the existing icon
collection (UserIcons.dat in the Pimlical folder for Pimlical/Desktop,
or IconArchive.dat in the Pimlical folder for Pimlical/Android) and the
new icon collection will appear when you next launch Pimlical.
|
| Icons in Pimlical/Android are
the wrong size or some icons are hidden at the bottom of the screen. |
Especially, when upgrading and using a new icon collection, you may
find that the icon sizes in the icon selection dialog are too big or
too small for you taste. You can control the size of the icons in that
dialog with the preferences: IconDisplayWidth and IconDisplayHeight.
If it looks like the number of rows is incorrect (a problem on just a
few Android devices), you can use the preferences:
FixNumberOfIconRows and FixNumberOfIconRowsLandscape
to fix the number of icon rows to a suitable value for your device. You
can also control the size of the icons displayed in the
EventSelectionList with the preference:
SelectionListIconSize.
|
| I have icons in my desktop
collection that I can't see in Pimlical/Android |
You can always generate a compatible icon collection for
Pimlical/Android provided that you have all the
separate graphics available in a folder (on installation of
Pimlical/Desktop, there is an icon folder that has all the graphics
that comprise the collection of graphics used in Pimlical/Desktop's
icon collection). Just use the EXPORT button in Menu | Icon Management
in Pimlical/Desktop to generate an IconArchive.dat file that you can
then copy to the Pimlical folder on your phone's sd (or virtual SD)
card. Then force-stop Pimlical or kill it with a task killer and
relaunch Pimlical and you will then see the matching icons.
|
| The
font sizes used in Pimlical/Android aren't right for this phone |
With tens of thousands of different Android devices out there (and all slightly different,) it's
not easy to try and come up with default font sizes that work well on
every device. However, it only takes a moment to change them. On
initial install, you do have a chance to preset most font sizes to
either a Small set (suitable for low-rez devices) or a Large or Huge
set
(suitable for very high-rez devices) instead of using the
standard defaults. You can change the font sizes of various items in
the
User Interface by going into menu | Preferences | DisplayFonts. In any
view, you can use an up-down (or down-up) stroke on the right edge of
the screen to dynamically change the size of text in that view (every
view remembers the font size independently) to match what you like to
see. The option to pick small/standard/large/huge fonts is only shown
once
when
Pimlical is launched after being installed. You can get those options
to re-display by setting the preference: ShowHelpOnStartup
to true and then going into menu | Help & Usage Tips. If you
want
to have Pimlical retain the original font settings, uncheck all four
boxes.
|
| Sync with Exchange Server does not
work, or only works one way |
|
The following post about this problem (which is not a Pimlical/Android
issue) may be helpful:
Some deeper digging in the internet showed that other users have the
same problem. They describe that the sequence in how the accounts are
added to the phone influence if Exchange is showing up in the calendar
app or not. Many users solved the problem by completely resetting the
phone and to set up the Exchange account before setting
up the Google account.
This
is not necessary! Here
is
a solution which works without completely resetting your phone:
-
Delete the Exchange account under
“Settings > Accounts and Sync”
-
Delete the calendar data by going into Settings, Applications, and
selecting both Calendar and Calendar Storage, then “Delete data”
-
Re-add the exchange account.
Please note that your Exchange calendar won’t be deleted; but if you
have items in your local calendar
they will be gone after these steps!
|
|
I see a new version in Menu | About | What's
New, but Upgrade button says I have latest version |
| When a new
version is released, it is first posted on the web site along with an
updated Revision History, but not marked as an official version. The
Pimlical Forum is then notified of the new release so that highly
experienced users download it first. That way, if there is any
unexpected issue say on a particular phone, it can get addressed before
the entire user base starts downloading it. If no major issues are
found, Pimlico then marks it as an official upgrade and at that point,
the Upgrade button will recognize it as a new
official release. That process typically takes around 3-4 days to run
its course. Also, when Google or Amazon Market choose to upgrade your
phone with the new version is not something that is under the control
of Pimlico Software.
If you purchased Pimlical/Android some time
ago directly from Pimlico Software, you can get a link to the upgrade
by sending an email with the subject line: Pimlical/Android
Download Request to Tech Support.
|
|
I am in an unusual timezone and get an
error: ERROR: TimeZone Problem..... |
If you see an error message like: ERROR: TimeZone Problem,
Home, Current or Creation Timezone Specified in Preference database is
not in correct format or references an undefined Timezone or DST Rule,
this most likely means that your particular timezone has not been
defined in the Worldtimezones.txt database. If this is the case, you
need to add a line to the Worldtimezones.txt file that is in the
Pimlical folder on the phone (use either an Android text editor like
Jota, or connect phone to PC and use notepad.exe to edit the file). Add
the line in this format (this example is for Saskatchewan that uses
Central time, but no DST rule):
-06:00 Canada/East-Saskatchewan[Sask]
The first character is - for timezones West of GMT and + for timezones
East of GMT. This is followed by the Offset from GTM in HH and MM. If
there is a DST rule, there is a single letter after the GMT offset (See
Pimlical
Reference Manual for details on how to setup DST rules). This
is then followed by the Olsen database name for the timezone. Try and
locate the name in the
Olsen Database which lists all the Olsen names for timezones.
If it's not there, try and at least locate a timezone with the same
attributes (GMT offset and DST rule) - if not, make one up (it's ok for
Pimlical, but if you sync to Google, Google needs a valid Olsen name).
At the end put in the abbreviation for the timezone in brackets (this
is arbitrary, so you can use whatever you like there). Close out the
Worldtimezones.txt file. Launch Pimlical, go into Menu | Preferences
and tap the Date/Time Settings button
and
that will force a re-read on the current Worldtimezones.txt file in the
Pimlical folder and you should then see your new entry and can select
it.
One other possibility if you set the correct
timezone but it gets corrupted/reset on a regular basis is that your
phone does not set the timezone correctly, or does not follow the
proper Android standard for designating the current timezone. If that
is the case, you can set the preference AutoSetTimezoneFromPhone
to false which will prevent P/A from trying to
reset the timezone. You can then manually set the timezone in the
Date/Time section of preferences, and be assured that P/A will not
change them based upon the Android OS.
|
| Alarms are not sounding OR Pimlical
does not seem to obey Alarm volume setting |
First, make sure that your alarm preferences are set up properly (PimlicalAlarmHandling
should be set to Local or All).
In particular, you may need to explicitly assign
an alarm sound to the preference AlarmDefaultSound
and AlarmFloatDefaultSound as some Android devices
fail to provide any default sounds and also fail to notify an
application that the normal Android default isn't even supported. Also,
on some Android phones (such as some Samsung
phones), the Alarm volume setting is not something displayed in System
Settings, so there is no easy way to change it - however, there is a
small applet, Volume Manager which you may want
to install that does allow you full access to all the sound volume
settings.
|
|
How can I change the number of days
displayed in the Day+ view? |
Go into Menu | Views and do a long press on the
view button for either the Day+/week/Month+/list views and you can
change the default number of days/weeks/months that are displayed. You
can also set up a filter in Pimlical Desktop, export it and copy it to
the Pimlical folder on your phone and then use the import feature to
import it into Pimlical/Android. The format of filters in
Pimlical/Desktop and Pimlical/Android is the same. There is also an
option to allow the Day+ view to be anchored to the start of the week
or not.
|
|
How can I change the color of items or set a
default? |
|
Normally calendar colors are set from whatever Google Calendar is
using. You can override those colors by changing the color of a
calendar, or by setting the preference
UseGoogleCalendarColors to false. Go into
Menu | Select calendars and briefly tap the calendar in the list. A
dialog then appears where you can set the default foreground and
background color for the calendar, as well as a default icon. Pure
white (255,255,255) and pure black (0,0,0) are treated as default
values and are the default settings. To set an explicit white, use
(254,254,254) or for black (1,1,1) so Pimlical realizes it's not a
default setting for the color.
To set the color of just a single item, go
into the edit dialog and towards the bottom of that dialog (scrolling
down if necessary), you will see a small F and B (for
Foreground/Background) to the right of the Private
checkbox - click on that area and you will get a color selection dialog
where you can set the foreground and background color for the item. As
noted in that dialog, you can preset any color you like into the
selection palette through the [Colors] section in Preferences. A custom
color set for an event will always override the default color setting
for the calendar.
|
| The times of my events are shifting
by one hour (or more than one hour) |
Check the
timezone settings carefully. In particular, there are two
places in Google Calendar where timezone information is set - globally
in the main Settings and in the setting for each
individual calendar. Make sure this matches the timezone setting in
Pimlical as well as the timezone setting for your phone itself. If your
phone is resetting to the wrong timezone (some phones reset to Mountain
time when in fact it should be Arizona Time), then change the
preference AutoSetTimezoneFromPhone to false and
manually set the timezones in the Date/Time Items sectdion of
Preferences.
|
|
There's some funny text/characters at the
start of the note field - why is it there? |
Pimlical
has many advanced features not present in any other calendar
application. The only way in which these advanced features can be
maintained is by putting tags (in square brackets) at the start of the
note field as the note field is guaranteed to be updated properly by
all conduit software. These tags are of course hidden in all versions
of Pimlical. When Google fixes the bug in Android whereby the
ExtendedProperties field is trashed by their Android sync software, it
will then be possible to change the preference
UseGoogleExtendedProperties to true at
which point the tags will be hidden in Google Calendar at least as the
tags can be put in that hidden field. There are no such options with
Outlook or other calendar applications, so the tags do have to be
there. If you just use Pimlical/Desktop and Google calendar, you can
use the Extended properties field as Pimlical properly supports it
(with the caveat that if that calendar syncs with any other
application, that other application's sync software may destroy that
field.
|
| Accented
characters are not displaying properly after DirectSync to other
platform |
This will be an encoding issue. You need to set the preference: JavaDefaultEncoding
to be matched on both platforms. If they are currently blank, try
changing them to read UTF-8 as that will likely resolve this issue. If
you are using a non-Roman language, note that any valid encoding that
is permitted by Java can be used in Pimlical - just make sure both
platforms are properly matched, and also always re-test with newly
created memos and not old memos as changing this preference is not
likely to retroactively correct any encoding issues.
Note:
if your operating system does not support accented characters in
filenames, then you should avoid their use for things like category
names or titles of memos.
|
| Pimlical is
slowing down because of a large number of old appointments - how can I
archive them? |
Simplest way to handle setting up an archive for use in
Pimlical/Android is to use Pimlical/Desktop and do this:
1. In Pimlical Desktop, go into advanced find, hit clear, then pick a
start date of 1-jan-1900 and an end date of say 31-dec-2009 and hit ok
2. Click on CHANGE and specify a category of ARCHIVE (create that
category if necessary) and click on OK
3. Set the preference ApptCategoriesToSync to only include the Archive
category.
4. Create an archive calendar on the handheld called say
PimlicalArchive.dat - you can easily create that by just duplicating
PimlicalLocalCalendar.dat under that name so that both
PimlicalLocalCalendar.dat and PimlicalArchive.dat are in the
PimlicalCalendars folder.
5. Do a sync overwrite from desktop to PimlicalArchive.dat
(ApptCategoriesToSync will only copy the Archive category).
6. Change ApptCategoriesToSync to include ALL categories, EXCEPT
"Archive"
7. Sync normally now from desktop to PimlicalLocalCalendar.dat
On the desktop, you can see all your events
by just displaying all categories. In Pimlical/Android, to view the
archived items, you would go into menu | Select Local Calendar and
select the Archive calendar to look at (and then do that again to
return to viewing the regular calendar).
|
| What is the difference between
Floating Events and Tasks? They look very similar |
They
are very similar, and tasks exist largely for historical reasons rather
than as a necessity to manage task-type functions. Most Pimlical users
only use floating events, but users who were used to having a separate
tasks app/database, or who are still syncing to or using third party
apps that need the old Palm MDB databases find it essential to have
this function maintained.
The most obvious difference is that
every instance of a repeat floating event appears in the database,
while only the next occurrence of a repeat task appears in the
database. There are significant differences in how repeat
floats
and repeat tasks are managed - the former automatically reschedules
itself to the next occurrence and drops a non-repeat instance of the
item as a reminder on that instance day. Also, repeat floating events
support a reschedule
from checkoff
date, so if you set a repeat float with a 60 day repeat interval but
check it off thirty days later, it will reschedule in another 60 days
rather than just 30 days.
There are also separate tasks views in
Pimlical/Desktop and Pimlical/Android, for users who just want to focus
on those items. Floating events share the same set of
categories
as regular events, while tasks have their own separate set of
categories. The start/end dates of a task are tied closely to the due
date, while the start/end dates of floating events are not. Users who
regularly export their calendar in iCalendar format may want to keep
their tasks as tasks rather than floats so they can be easily excluded
from the output file.
Over the years, the attributes of floats
and tasks have become closer and closer as users have asked for the
same capabilities in both items, so if you are wondering whether you
should use floats or tasks, or why both are present, chances are you
can ignore tasks and just use floating events.
|
|
How do I
link an appointment to a contact? |
There are many commands available as a popup when the Event
Selection List is displayed (this list pops up whenever a
brief tap is made on a day in any view). The popup commands are
accessed with a long press on the event. Scroll
towards the end of the list to access the commands that allow you to
add and view a linked contact (there is no limit on the number of
contacts you can link). Note too that you can change the order of the
popup commands and also choose which ones are displayed.
|
| A
brief
message ("toast") appears but I can't read it because it flashes off
the screen too quickly |
Some devices seem to have shorter display
times than others. However, there is a preference, LongDurationForMessages
that you can set to TRUE to tell the Android OS to display the message
for a longer period of time than usual - so you might want to set that
preference.
|
| How do I schedule an event that
repeats on every other day of the second-to-last week of every month
that has a new moon in the first two weeks of that month, (but not if
there is a lunar eclipse in that month)? |
In the Repeat dialog, tap the center of the
screen 11 times in rapid succession and then stroke the Kanji character
for the Moon at top left, then press the back button for exactly 273
seconds and a dialog will open allowing you to enter this event (Be
sure to check the box saying 'skip
event if new moon coincides with
lunar eclipse'). And time it carefully as if you hold the
back button
down for more than 275 seconds it causes a hard reset and engages a
normally unused stepup transformer that converts the 5v from the
internal battery into 440V at 10 amps which can cause a bit of a
surprise to the unsuspecting novice and likely result in dropping the
phone). Glad to see you reading the FAQ's. 
|
