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jebanks |
Posted Sep 10, 2022 in: Early Sneak Peek into Next Generation *iOS/Android App* Betas
Score: 0
Hello Toodledo Owners,
Do you know when you will be adding Notes capabilities to the new mobile app? I am an outlying use case, but for various reasons, Notes are the only Toodledo feature I use. |
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jebanks |
I am currently using an iPhone app called Outliner from the developer CarbonFin for my lists. (I also use Appigo's Todo and Notebook to access and sync Toodledo.com info.)
Outliner is a good, quick program that I use for shopping lists which would be cumbersome in Toodledo.com/Todo/Notebook. The outlines are stored on the iPhone. List items in Outliner can either have checkboxes or not on an item by item basis, giving it the flexibility to be used for outlines, simple lists and simple workflows or steps. Outliner has a free, password-protected site called Outliner Online that allows you to sync your outlines to their server, view (but not yet edit) outlines on a desktop, and import/export outlines from/to your desktop in the OPML format. So, although you can't use Outliner Online to sync directly to a desktop app, you can import and export your outlines to programs like OmniOutliner for Mac and Bonsai for Windows, which can import/export using OPML. This program would be perfect for my needs if a) it could sync directly with something on the desktop, or b) if one could edit outlines on their Web server; and c) if Outliner Online offered encryption along with the password-protection. I don't want my sensitive info online without extra security. I don't care if someone sees my shopping list, however, and Outliner is great as an iPhone-centric shopping list manager. And if you use your device to take hierarchical notes or to informally outline projects or workflows, it's a great outlining program that can import/export to desktop outlining programs. For shopping, I enter individual items with checkboxes that I can check off as I shop. I also have a Reference section in my shopping list, without checkboxes; here, I store information on items I typically buy, and measurements and other info that would be handy as I shop. The Reference section items don't have checkboxes. I can show or hide any part of the Reference section by expanding or collapsing that part of the outline/list. If you're interested, here's their website (note that the main page has not yet been updated with a couple of new features available in v1.3 of the program; look at the Version History page or their page in iTunes for that information.): http://carbonfin.com/index.html |
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jebanks |
For each note:
Click on the note name. Click on "edit note". In the drop down menu under the note title, select a folder. Click "save changes." I don't think there's a way to mass-move notes, neither on toodledo.com or in Appigo Notebook on the iPhone. |
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jebanks |
I use both my task list and my calendar for events. Some go in both, some only go in one or the other.
If I need to be able to refer to something later as an archive of my activities and events, or if it needs to be scheduled around, I put it in iCal. If, in addition, it's upcoming and I want to make sure I don't forget about it or miss it, I will capture it as a due-dated task and put a reference to the calendar event in the task's note. If it's definitely a to-do that needs to stay top of mind, and I don't need to refer to it in the future necessarily or schedule around it, I capture it in my tasks only. In particular, certain events that I need to do every year or twice a year, like DST clocks or getting vehicle stickers, live only in my to-do list, and I manually change them to the next upcoming date after completion. I know I could set this up as repeating tasks, but I like to stay engaged by reviewing my list and doing things manually. Perhaps not the most efficient way to do things, but that's how I do it! I'd also like to mention that I really like having access to my to-dos through Toodledo.com when I am at my work computer at my day-job. My previous to-do tech was Mac Entourage/Palm Treo. Although I could manage tasks on the Treo when out and about, my desktop at home was my home base and where I preferred to do the heavy lifting. Now, with Toodledo.com, I can do all of that at work, too, and referencing/changing stuff on the iPhone when needed through Appigo Todo is far superior to the Treo's to-do app. (I also pay for the Pro version of Toodledo, to get the encryption and to give them some monetary love for their efforts.) This message was edited Nov 07, 2008. |
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jebanks |
Are you talking about changes showing up on your iPhone in the Appigo Notebook app? If so, (and I'm not sure if you know this already), but syncing on the iPhone has to be instigated from Appigo Notebook. You either manually press the sync button on the phone app, or set up the phone app's preferences so that it automatically syncs every time you launch Appigo notebook (I would not recommend that, though). There is no way to "push" changes from Toodledo.com Notebook--Appigo Notebook "pulls" the sync. And Notebook syncing does not go through iTunes or your USB connection--it happens wirelessly, through the internet, either via WiFi or the AT&T network. Apologies if I am misunderstanding.
This message was edited Nov 03, 2008. |
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jebanks |
Click on "Title".
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jebanks |
Hi Harry, here's how to solve your problems.
You can set up Excel so that you can put line breaks within cells. Here's how to do it (Mac version), plus another Excel option you should set up: a) Select all of the cells on the worksheet you're on, and choose "Format >Cells...." from the Menu bar. Under "Alignment", put a checkmark in "Wrap Text" in the "Text Control" section. Click OK. b) In the Excel preferences, choose the "Edit" section and make sure that "Edit directly in cell" has a checkmark. Click OK. Now, you should be able to type or insert line breaks, so long as you are editing directly in the cell and not in the formula bar. Here's how to get your CSV file to accept line breaks within the note body. The CSV format will respect your line breaks so long as the note body text is surrounded by double quote marks. In other words, if you have line breaks in your Excel document cell, it should look like this: "Text text text text. Text text text text. Text text text text. Text text text text." If you save your Excel as a CSV and everything else is set up correctly, a cell like that above should import into Toodle.com Notebook with line breaks intact. You will have quotemarks in the notes, but you can just delete them whenever you have occasion to edit the note. There's a much longer post in the Tips & Tricks forum called "how to import palm desktop (mac) memos/notes to the notebook" that gives more details. Just ignore that parts that don't apply to your situation. |
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jebanks |
Oh wait--maybe this is the problem: because you didn't have categories for ALL of your notes, perhaps the Toodledo.com importer hiccuped and didn't create ANY folders. If that is the problem, the solution would be to go back to an earlier step--either the Excel file, or all the way back to Palm Desktop--and assign EVERY note to a category. I assume that in Palm Desktop, there is some way to mass-assign categories, but I wouldn't know for sure because I had always used Entourage to sync with my Palm, never Palm Desktop. When I imported from Entourage, all of my notes had categories assigned, and I didn't have any problems with folders being created. So, I'd nuke all of the notes and try again, making sure that all notes have categories.
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jebanks |
Hm, I don't know why that dropdown choice for the 3rd column was missing. The Toodledo.com developers would be better able to answer that. When I imported my notes from Entourage, Toodledo.com created new folders based on what was in the CSV automatically, after I assigned that 3rd column to "Folder". (I imported my stuff in batches of several categories at a time.)
Yes, you can create folders in Toodledo. You would then have to individually click on "Edit Note" for each note and reassign it to a new folder. Just look very carefully around Toodledo.com and you'll see all of the functions you need to do all of that. There just isn't a way to mass-move your notes in Toodledo. If you don't want to edit 500+ notes, I would suggest backing up the steps you took to get your notes into Toodledo, and trying again (after nuking all of the notes you've already imported). That would be less time-consuming. Also, here's a tip: when you click on a note to view its content, the lightbox will appear all the way at the top of the window. So if you're way down your list of 500, it may appear that clicking on a note did not open it. It did--you just have to scroll all the way to the top of the screen. This message was edited Oct 21, 2008. |
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jebanks |
Matt, I posted detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to import from Palm Desktop for Mac in the Tips & Tricks Forum in the post, "How to import Palm Desktop (Mac) memos/notes to the Notebook".
As far as getting rid of the notes you've already imported, go to your Account Settings, scroll all the way to the bottom of the window, and click on "Delete all Notebook entries." And, one more thing: If the file you are importing to Toodledo.com doesn't look right in the last step before final import, just back out of it using the back button in your browser, and the file will not be imported. This message was edited Oct 20, 2008. |
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jebanks |
Posted Oct 18, 2008 in: How to import Palm Desktop (Mac) memos/notes to the Notebook, st
Score: 1
Here are some step-by-step instructions for exporting memos (notes) from Palm Desktop (Mac version) for import into Toodledo.com. These are based on my travails, posted in other threads, trying to get 300+ notes out of Microsoft Entourage and into Toodledo. It's actually a couple of steps simpler if you're coming from Palm Desktop. I just verified each of these steps as I typed them up, so I'm confident that they work. Toodledo/Appigo Notebook developers, if you want to permanently post these somewhere, please do.
Why all the rigamarole? The first issue is that Toodledo.com accepts only CSV (comma-separated values) files for note upload. Palm Desktop for Mac exports only as tab-separated files. (I have Palm Desktop for Mac v4.2.2., so if there's a later version that DOES export CSV, please enlighten me.) You will need to convert the Palm export file from tab-delimited to CSV. The second issue is that you will need to do some editing of the memo body text in order for it to sort itself into the right fields in the Toodledo.com importer, and to retain any line breaks/carriage returns/paragraph breaks in the body text of individual notes. You will need: a) Microsoft Excel b) TextWrangler, a free program that is available here: http://www.barebones.com/product s/textwrangler/download.html In Palm Desktop, open up your Memo List and choose "Export..." from the file menu. You'll have a choice of which Module to export, which in this case is "Memos." You'll want to choose to export all of your memos. The format you want to use is Tab & Return. Click the "Columns" button, and choose to export only Title, Body and Category 1. Give the file a name and click "Export." The file will be saved as a plain text document. You are now ready to bring this plain text file into Excel so that you can make some edits and convert it to a CSV file. First, you'll have to make a couple of preparations in Excel: a) Open up a new workbook, select all of the cells on the worksheet you're on, and choose "Format >Cells...." from the Menu bar. Under "Alignment", put a checkmark in "Wrap Text" in the "Text Control" section. Click OK. b) In the Excel preferences, choose the "Edit" section and make sure that "Edit directly in cell" has a checkmark. Click OK. With your new Workbook open, go to the Data menu item and choose Get External Data>Import Text File. Choose the Palm export file from wherever you saved it and click "Get Data." This will open up a Text Import Wizard. On the first screen of the Wizard, choose "Delimited". Click Next. On the next screen, choose "Tab" as the type of delimiter. Click Next. On the third screen, set (or leave) the Column data format as "General." Click Finish. On the next screen, choose "existing worksheet" and select the top left cell of the sheet as the place your data will start flowing into. Click OK. All of your notes should now be populating your worksheet. There should be 3 columns, one for the Note title, one for the note body, and one for the Category. Each row is a separate note. You will notice that, if you had line breaks in the body of a particular note, they have been replaced by a dark paragraph symbol. You will want to turn these back into real line breaks so that your notes look right in Toodledo.com and Notebook. The remainder of these instructions explain how to use Excel and TextWrangler to fix this. In your worksheet, you will need to put double-quote marks ("text text text") at the beginning and end of the text in any note body cell that has line break symbols. This is because the CSV file format will respect line breaks within a cell so long as the text is surrounded by double-quote marks. You can edit any cell directly by double-clicking in the cell. (If the first or last character in the cell is one of those paragraph marks, the double-quotes should enclose those symbols as well.) Once you've done all that, you'll need to save the workbook as a CSV file. Do a "Save As" and choose CSV (comma delimited) as the file format. Just click on through the "caution screens" that Excel will throw up at you and save, then close the window. You should now have a file somewhere saved with a .csv extension. Now, you're going to fix those paragraph symbols in the the body text of your notes using TextWrangler. Open TextWrangler and use it to open the CSV file you just created. Now, select one of those paragraph symbols and copy it (command-C). Then, under the Search menu item, select "Find..." In the "Search For" field, paste in (command-V) the paragraph symbol that you copied. In the "Replace With" field, type in \r (backslash r). Then click the "Replace All" button. Then save the document. The TextWrangler-edited file is now ready for Toodledo.com import. Log into your Toodledo account and go to the Import page, then scroll down to the CSV Notebook Import section. Choose the CSV file you just finished editing and click Upload. You'll be taken to a screen that shows you a preview of how your imported notes will be organized. (If you've done everything correctly in the earlier steps, your ducks should all be in the right rows and columns, and you'll have line breaks in the note body text instead of symbols. If you didn't, the first likely culprit is that you forgot to put a double-quote mark at the end of one of the text cells, which would throw everything off. So you'd have to back up and figure out where you went wrong.) There will be dropdown menus at the top of each column so that you can pour the notes into the right places. Set the first column as Title, the second column as Note, and the third column (the category from Palm) as Folder. If everything looks right, click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the Window. Congratulations, your notes should now be in Toodledo, organized in folders that correspond to the categories you had in Palm Desktop! Sync with Appigo Notebook on the iPhone and kiss your Treo goodbye. If the double-quote marks bother you, you can always edit them out in Toodledo, but if you've got hundreds of notes, it's not worth the bother, and you can take them out individually when you have to look at a particular note or change it. I hope this helps. The same steps need to be taken to get notes out of Entourage, except that you'll first need to use an Applescript from Paul Berkowitz to export the notes from Entourage. It costs a little money for the scripts, and is a bit of a pain, but if anyone is desperate for a step by step on that, I'll post one if I get a chance. This message was edited Oct 18, 2008. |
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jebanks |
Posted Oct 14, 2008 in: Mind Mapping with iPhone and ToodleDo
Score: 0
Posted by whitten:
While the name of these products include the word "Mind", there is no obvious way to map a mind-map to a to-do list. Not necessarily true. For example, OmniGroup's Mac app OmniGraffle, which is a diagramming/charting app, has a built-in outline view. And outlines can be moved back and forth between OmniGraffle and their outlining program, OmniOutliner, which has a lot of built-in task functionality. |
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jebanks |
Hello Toodledo Developers,
I just wanted to post some of my feature needs for Toodledo Notes. I'm sure you are working on many of these, but I just wanted to provide my input. Perhaps you could let us know where you are as far as implementing more robust Notebook features. Overall, we need to be able to display, sort, enter, search and edit notes as easily as we can in the To-Do List, (and as easily as we already can in Appigo's Notebook iPhone app), but in particular: * Full search capabilities for note Titles/Contents, as on the Appigo app (currently, it's easier to find stuff on the iPhone than in Toodledo). * Having the note edit lightbox pop up where the window is located in the browser, so we don't have to scroll all the way back up to the top of the page. * Having the note edit lightbox instantaneously save the changes and remain editable, just like in the To-Do List. *Actually, on the last 2 points, having the note content field open inline, the way it can work in the To-Do List, would be ideal. * Having the Notebook view state remain the same after editing a note as before * Ability to open the Notebook page with all of the Notebook folders closed as the initial state. * Ability to duplicate an entire note as a basis to make minor changes to it as a different note. Thank you for your work and offerings so far! |
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jebanks |
Posted Oct 05, 2008 in: Usability with upcoming Blackberry Storm
Score: 0
With as big a market as BlackBerry reportedly is, do you mean to say nobody has made a decent BlackBerry To-Do App that improves on the BlackBerry factory-stock task list? What is it about Toodledo that makes it so much of a better alternative than what's available on the BlackBerry platform?
Also, as far as Enterprise support is concerned, many employers who issue BlackBerries have them locked down so thoroughly that you can't put anything on them or use any unauthorized apps, especially if they sync with company data. So is the idea that you'd be doing just your personal todoing through the Web with Toodledo? At any rate, it doesn't seem like berating and insulting developers who have their own mission and priorities into supporting your platform is a very productive strategy. (Not that some Mac users haven't tried it in the past, I admit, and without even having the market share card to play!) Especially when there is such a large market of BlackBerry developers (or so we are told) who could hook into Toodledo's API and create a BlackBerry-native app, the way the Appigo folks have created an iPhone native app. Let's face it, Web apps are a clunky, last-resort way to get to your data and I wouldn't expect a lot of Web services to keep killing themselves trying to be Web-accessible for every device. The bar has been raised, and the onus is on BlackBerry to put a decent Web browser on their devices. iPhone has one, Android will have one, it's not rocket-science anymore. |
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jebanks |
Posted Oct 02, 2008 in: How do I import into Notebook?
Score: 0
OK, after much brain-racking, trial-and-erroring-ing and Googling, I have found a workable solution to my Mac Entourage Note export/Toodledo Notebook import problems. (See my previous message for a description of the problem.)
As suggested, I downloaded TextWrangler for the Mac in order to attempt to replace the paragraph gremlins with actual character returns/line breaks in the CSV file. The problem is, CSV interprets every line break as a new record, thus throwing the whole CSV file out of whack. After trying to fix this every which way, I finally stumbled across the Wikipedia entry on CSV files. The problem lies here: the specification for CSV says that "fields with embedded line breaks must be delimited by double-quote characters." So, I went back to the CSV file in Excel, and put quote marks at the beginning and end of the contents of each cell containing note body text. I then re-saved the CSV file and opened it in TextWrangler, and replaced the paragraph gremlins with line breaks. Then I uploaded the CSV to Toodledo. Lo and behold, this time it worked. I uploaded about a hundred notes, and each one uploaded properly, with the line breaks within the note bodies being respected. The only issue is that all of my notes have quotes at the beginning and end, but this is only a very minor annoyance. Typing in the quotes was much, much less tedious than trying to manually fix the line breaks in Excel would have been. A couple of things I encountered working in Excel: putting quotes around email addresses and URLs in Excel turns them into hyperlinks. If you don't want this to happen, type an extra space between the quote and the text, both at the beginning and end. Also, I'll mention that the above procedure seems like it would work for exporting notes from Palm Desktop on the Mac, too, because the version I have only exports as teb-delimited, and it puts in paragraph gremlins instead of line breaks, just like the Export-Import Entourage Applescripts. Anyway, I hope this helps someone else! Posted by Toodledo: That certainly sounds like a tricky problem. I can't guarantee that this will work because I haven't tried it, but I would try using a text editor other than Word, since Word often does some automatic formatting that you don't want to happen. You could try Apple's TextEdit, or you could download something like Text Wrangler.
Also, I would use Excel to convert it to a CSV file before I tried to convert the funky characters back to line breaks. Good luck! |
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jebanks |
Posted Sep 30, 2008 in: How do I import into Notebook?
Score: 0
I'm having a terrible time trying to get my notes out of Mac Entourage and into the Toodledo Notebook, and I'm hoping someone has some suggestions or help.
I'm using the Export-Import Entourage 1.3.10 Applescripts to export notes out of Entourage. (It's the only way to export notes from Entourage in a useable file.) These scripts export notes as Tab-delimited. You're supposed to be able to open the resulting text file in Excel and resave it as a CSV, which is the format that Toodledo requires. The problem is that most of my hundreds of notes have carriage returns in them. The Applescripts replace these CRs with a graphic version of a paragraph symbol, not real line breaks or paragraph marks. There is no way to do a search and replace on these symbols in Excel--that can only be done in Word. (There is a specific script in the bundle that is supposed to take care of this problem, but it chokes after fixing only a handful of rows in the Excel sheet, leaving the majority with the paragraph symbols in. The Export-Import developer is MIA-- I have written to him twice in the last several weeks and gotten no response.) Well, if I copy the data out of Excel and paste it into a Word doc, I get a table with the same structure as the cells I copied out of Excel. I can then search and replace the paragraph symbols with line breaks or paragraph marks. But then, when I try to paste the Word table back into the equivalent cells in Excel, every line break WITHIN a cell splits off a separate cell, thus ruining the entire structure and making it unuseable for import. The only solution I see thus far is to individually edit the content of the notes in Excel, manually replacing the paragraph symbols with line breaks that don't split the cells, and then saving the workbook as a CSV. I've tried that, and it works, and imports to Toodledo properly. But I don't have time to manually edit the contents of nearly 400 notes. I've also tried to edit Tab-delimited and CSV files by opening them directly in Word as text files and then doing search-replace. But then, Excel interprets each line break in the CSV file as a new row, creating another chaotic, unuseable file. Anyone have any ideas? Is there a Mac text editor with search and replace, for instance, which can work on CSV files? Or any other thoughts? Any help is appreciated! p.s. I thought the other solution might be to disable Entourage syncing with my old Palm Treo, then overwrite the Palm memos from the Treo into Palm desktop. But Palm desktop on the Mac apparently only exports as Tab-delimited, which Toodledo can't import, and the resultant files also have the paragraph symbols in them. |
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jebanks |
Posted Sep 21, 2008 in: How do I import into Notebook?
Score: 0
Thanks for posting the experimental Note importer.
I've been fooling around with it, and there's a problem I can't figure out. I'm exporting Notes from Mac Entourage using Berkowitz's Export-Import Applescripts. The script exports notes as tab-delimited. I open the Berkowitz exports in Excel in order to re-save them as a CSV file for Toodledo. However, the body of the note comes out in the CSV file with paragraph symbols where there were line breaks before. When I run the CSV through the Toodledo importer, another symbol gets inserted in the note body: a vertical line split in two. Is there any way to get the line breaks to show up correctly without having to manually edit hundreds of notes? Thanks for any help. |
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jebanks |
Posted Sep 17, 2008 in: How do I import into Notebook?
Score: 0
(I just sent this to Toodledo via the email form on this site, but I'm posting the text here (and in Appigo's Google Group) so that others who concur can weigh in as well.)
Hello Toodledo, I'm a new Toodledo Pro member, and I'd like to join in on a frequent Notebook feature request. I've signed up because I have purchased Appigo Todo & Notebook for my iPhone, and I'll be using Toodledo as the replacement for Microsoft Entourage Notes and Tasks on the Mac. (I bought the Pro subscription for the encryption feature.) Previously, I used the combination of Entourage and a Palm Treo to make all of my personal information mobile. (Microsoft makes it really easy to replace the Palm desktop application with Entourage through their Palm Conduit, and the Entourage Calendar and Address Book also sync with Mac Sync Services.) Now that I'm using an iPhone, I can no longer sync Entourage Notes and Tasks to my mobile device. Todo & Notebook are a great solution for me, since they offer both sync and offline/local storage of data on the iPhone. None of the other Note/Task options available for the iPhone work as well for my needs. Now, I'd like to add my name to the growing chorus of those requesting that import/export options be added a.s.a.p. to the Toodledo Notebook. I have about 500 notes in Entourage and on my Treo which I would like to get into the Toodledo/Appigo Notebook without tedious pruning and hand-copying. Further, I'd like to lobby for some options that work specifically with Entourage. Entourage doesn't have good export options built in, but there's an Applescripter named Paul Berkowitz who has created a package of scripts that export virtually everything in the Entourage database in just about any common format. They're available here: http://scriptbuilders.net/files/exportimportentourage1.3.10.html If Toodledo introduces import/export options in the same way that you import and export tasks, there would be a workaround for me: disable the Entourage Palm conduit, load my Notes from the Treo back into Palm desktop, and then use your import tool. But if you could create something that works directly with Entourage and/or the Berkowitz export formats, it would be much more convenient. I think that for both Toodledo and Appigo, the market of Mac Entourage/iPhone users could be a big part of your business. If you could offer import-export options for Notebook, you'd be fulfilling a huge need. The lack of Note/Task options with offline storage kept me from buying an iPhone for over a year, and if others in my situation could find out about the combined Toodledo/Appigo solutions, you'd potentially have lots of new customers. (And in a perfect world, it would be awesome if Toodledo could sync directly with the Entourage database without the need for importing or exporting. Think about it!) Thanks for listening, Jim B. |