Using the Calendar

Calendar events allow you to specify dates and times when a task should occur. The desktop edition of Life Balance includes an integrated calendar for scheduling events. Tasks in your outline can be scheduled on the calendar by simply dragging them to a particular date. Once on the calendar, you can specify a time and duration for the event, create a repeating schedule, and add notes to the event.

Not all tasks need to be scheduled using the calendar. One-time deadlines can be set directly in the Task Details for a task using the “by Due Date” setting, and repeating tasks that do not have to happen at a particular date and time can be set to happen “Routinely”. See Specifying Dates, Times, and Schedules for more information.

There are three calendar panels in Life Balance — Month, Week, and Day — which all work in the same way. Events are displayed in chronological order, with untimed events listed first, followed by events that are scheduled for a particular time. Events that span multiple days are listed on each day where they occur. Each event is displayed with a color bar that is keyed to the corresponding section of the outline.

If you are synchronizing with the mobile edition of Life Balance, events on your desktop calendar will synchronize with the Palm’s built-in Date Book.

Creating New Events in the Calendar

Every event on the calendar is associated with a task in your outline that is set to happen “By Calendar”. In order to schedule a new calendar event, you must first create a task or select an existing task — you cannot create a calendar event on its own. When you schedule a task on the calendar, the task will automatically change to happen “By Calendar”.

A single task may be scheduled on the calendar multiple times. Each event that you create for a task represents an additional date and time when that task is scheduled to occur.

There are three ways to add events to the calendar:

By dragging the circle or triangle next to a task from the Outline panel to one of the three calendar panels.
By dragging the task proxy icon from the Task Details panel to one of the three calendar panels.
By setting the Happens popup menu under the Time tab in the Task Details of a task to “By Calendar” and clicking on the Add button.

Once you have created a calendar event, the Event Details panel for that event will appear in the upper-right side of the window. In this panel, you can change the start date and time for the event, set up a repeating schedule, or add notes. See Changing the Schedule for an Event for more details.

Selecting Calendar Events

All events in the calendar are displayed next to a color bar that matches the color of the corresponding section of the outline. This color bar changes to indicate which event is currently selected, and to highlight related events in the calendar.

You can select an event in any of the calendar panels just by clicking on it. The color bar for the selected event will expand to fill the entire event. The task associated with the event and any other events scheduled for that task will also be framed with a colored box. The Event Details panel for the selected event will appear in the upper-right side of the window.

You can also select the next scheduled occurrence of the calendar event for a task by clicking on the date or time that is displayed next to the task in the Outline or To Do List. This displays the Time tab of the Task Details. Then click on the Open button or the event navigation icon to select the associated event. The Open button is provided for consistency with the mobile edition of Life Balance.

When a calendar event is selected, you can view the Task Details for the corresponding task by clicking on the task navigation icon in the upper-right corner of the Event Details panel.

Changing the Schedule for an Event

All changes to an event are made by editing the Event Details.

Under the Schedule tab, you can change the start date, time and duration of the event. Changing the start date will move the event to a different day on the calendar. You can choose either to schedule the event for a specific time, or to uncheck the Time box and simply assign the event to the entire day.

You can create events that span multiple days by setting a longer duration. These events will synchronize properly with the mobile edition of Life Balance, but in the Palm Calendar they will be displayed only on the start date.

Note: The lead time for calendar events is listed in the Task Details, not in the Event Details. You can get to the Task Details for an event by clicking on the task navigation icon in the upper-right corner of the Event Details panel. See Lead Time for more information.

Repeating Events

Once an event is on the calendar, you can set it to repeat on a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly schedule using the "Repeat" settings in the Event Details panel.

Daily: You can specify the frequency of a daily task. The default is 1, which means that the task will appear on the calendar every day. If you enter a 2, the task will appear every other day, etc.
Weekly: A weekly event allows you to set the days of the week you want the task to appear, for example every week on Wednesday and Friday.
Same Date Each Month: This choice schedules the event to repeat on the same date of the month as the start date listed under the Schedule tab, without regard to the day of the week. For example, the first of every month. You can schedule an event to happen once a quarter by setting the repeat interval to every 3 months.
Same Week Each Month: This choice schedules the event for the same day of the week each month, regardless of date. An example would be a meeting that is scheduled for the second Tuesday of each month. The day of the week is determined by the start date listed under the Schedule tab.
Yearly: Yearly events repeat on the same date each year. This is appropriate for birthdays, anniversaries and some holidays.

Tip: As you edit the repeat settings for an event, you can use the Month panel to confirm that you are getting the results that you want.

Once an event is set to repeat, changes to that event may bring up a dialog box asking you if you want to change all events, just the selected event, or the selected event and all following events. Once you have made this choice, your decision will remain in effect until you select a different calendar event.

If you do not specify an end date, the event will repeat indefinitely. If you specify an end date, the event will repeat through the date you choose. Tasks with repeating events are not deleted by the Purge command, unless the event has an end date and all ocurrences have been completed.

Repeating Event Behavior in the To Do List

The date of the next occurrence of your repeating task will be displayed next to the task in the Outline and To Do List. If the task is scheduled for today, then the time will be displayed instead. The color of the date field is determined by the lead time as described in Lead Time.

When you check off a repeating task, it will not appear on your To Do List until the next scheduled time for the event is two lead-times away.

Event Notes

Notes in the event details are attached to the particular event. Repeating events share the same note, but separately scheduled events for the same task do not.

If you want to assign notes to all occurrences of a task, you should enter them in the notes for the Task Details rather than in the Event Details.

Deleting Calendar Events

To delete an event from the calendar, select the event by clicking on it and choose “Delete event” from the Edit menu. If you selected a repeating event, Life Balance will ask you which occurences of the event you want to delete.

Deleting an event does not delete the task from your outline. If you delete all events for a task that happens “By Calendar”, it will still be listed as happening by calendar, but it will be prioritized in your To Do List as if it happens “Once”.

Deleting a task that happens by calendar will also delete all the associated events.

Printing

You can print your calendar by choosing Print from the File menu and then selecting the desired view (Month, Week, or Day) from the submenu. The chosen view will be printed using the date range currently selected for that view.