Sn@ilM@iler

for the Palm Computing Platform

Users Guide

Version 2.0
September 1999

Introduction

More and more of us are maintaining our Address Book on a PalmPilot. While this information does transfer back to the desktop to HotSync with a variety of desktop PIM (Personal Information Manager) programs, many people don't actually use the desktop program at all, but limit themselves to the PalmPilot handheld unit itself. SnailMailer (tm), working in conjunction with our PalmPrint printing software (which is required for its use), lets you print envelopes or sheets of mailing labels for names on your list, making your PalmPilot that much more useful. In addition, SnailMailer lets you create and save up to eight sets of mailing lists for easy recall. These might be things like your "Christmas Card List," your "Key Customer List," and so on. Note that these lists do not necessarily correspond to Categories within your Address Book. For example, you might have a category "Customers" in your Address Book, but you only want to send periodic mailings to a subset of those people you designate as key customers. SnailMailer lets you do that without having to establish new categories within your Address Book. You can also use SnailMailer to simply print out the complete information contained in any one Address Book entry, including phone numbers, notes, etc.

And with SnailMailer 2.0, there's lots more. SnailMailer 2.0 now includes full mail merge capability, letting you create memos with spots for name, address, etc. which are then filled in with information extracted from your address book.

The SnailMailer Main Screen

From the Applications window on your PalmPilot, look for the icon labelled SnailMailer which looks like this:

Tap on the icon and you'll see the main screen of the program.

The main portion of the screen (within the central box) will display names and other information from your Address Book to allow you to select the name(s) whose information is to be printed. This information is controlled by several of the pop-up menus on the screen:

Category Selector: In the upper right of the screen is the same category selector that appears when you run the standard Address Book application. You can display All of the entries in your Address Book (as in the example above), or just members of a particular category ("Business", "Personal", etc.)

Display Control: On the left of the second line of the screen is the display selector, which offers you two choices:

Selecting All will display all the names in the current category, while selecting Selected Only will display only those names you have selected for printing (to be discussed below). When you are selecting names to be printed, you'll need this to be set to All, but before you print a long list, you might want to switch to Selected Only to see exactly what will be printed.

City/Company Selector: The names in your address book are always displayed on the left portion of the screen as Last Name, First Name. The right half of each line can display either the city of residence (as in the example above), or the Company name, as controlled by the popup menu on the right side of line two:

Select whichever one helps you to best identify the people in your list; you can switch back and forth as needed. This selector does not affect the information which is printed on envelopes or mailing labels.

At the bottom of the main screen are two buttons and one "Find field." The Show button pops up a little window showing you the full name and address of the last name you tapped on in the main list. This is to help you in cases where you might have two entries for the same person (perhaps with their summer and winter address, or their home and work address) and you want to decide which one to print out. The Print button does just that, and will be discussed below. And finally, the Find field functions just like the "Look Up" function in the standard Palm Address Book application. Enter one or more letter into this field, and the list will scroll to the name of the first person whose last name begins with that letter(s).

Selecting Names to Print

To select names to print, just tap on them on the screen. The name will be highlighted (changed to reverse video, white letters on a black background) as seen below. If you make a mistake, tap on the same name again, and it will be unselected. You can select multiple names just by tapping on more than one name; if the names you want to select don't appear on the same screen, use the scroll arrows at the lower right of the screen (or the Find feature) to scroll down to the name of interest (names which were selected, and which no longer appear on the screen, are still selected).

To select a range of names, "tap and drag" (tap the stylus down on one name, leave it down, drag down to the last name you want to select, and then lift the stylus. Tap and drag only works on names on a single screen. If you want to select more, scroll down with the scroll arrow, then tap and drag again.

If you tap the Menu button on the lower left of your PalmPilot screen, the first menu is named Selection:

Tap the Select All menu item (or enter Command A with Graffiti), and all the names are selected (not just the ones on the current screen). This means if you are displaying All names using the Category selector in the upper right, every name in your Address Book is selected; if you are displaying just a single category, then all the names in that category are selected. Unselect All clears your current selections.

Configuring the Printout

SnailMailer prints envelopes, mailing label sheets, and complete address book information. You control the configuration of the first two items with the Options menu (the address book information prints in a fixed format):

Select Configure Envelopes and you'll see this screen:

The screen should be self-explanatory. The position of the address (over from the left edge and down from the top) is specified, as is the envelope orientation (the way in which you feed the envelopes into the printer), the font, and whether the address is printed in bold or plain.

Select Configure Labels and you'll see this screen:

Again, all these things should be self-explanatory. You set the position of the first (upper-left) label and the offset between labels, specify whether the labels are 2-across or 3-across, and whether the names and addresses are printed in a bold or plain font. Note that you cannot specify the font size, which is fixed at 12-pt type, nor can you control the font itself, which are always printed in monospaced (Courier) font. Depending on the lengths of names and addresses, you may find that you cannot "fit" the information in 3-up labels, and will be limited to 2-up labels. Bold printout takes up slightly more space than plain type.

Settings will depend on your printer and type of labels used, but here are two starting points:

Printing Envelopes or Mailing Labels

Before you do anything with SnailMailer, including selecting names, you should have first run PalmPrint software itself at least once, and configured it for your printer. Using PalmPrint is discussed in the PalmPrint manual, and is not discussed further here. At this point we'll assume that you have correctly configured PalmPrint and are running the SnailMailer application.

When you're ready to print, tap on the Print button, and you'll see this screen:

First select what you want to print - envelopes, mailing labels, or "all info" (the complete address book information for that entry or entries). On the bottom of the screen you have two options. Checking All will print all the currently selected names. If you are printing a lot of names, though, you might want to print only some at a time. For example, perhaps the envelope tray in your printer only holds 10 envelopes. In this case, you can check the #items button, fill in the number of items to be printed and the starting item #. When you print a subset of the items in this way, after the first "print job" is complete the "starting #" is automatically incremented. Using the example above, for example, the next time you tap the Print button, the screen will read "10 items starting at #11". So unless something goes wrong, and one batch needs to be reprinted, you won't need to reenter these numbers (the starting item will be reset to 1 when you exit and then re-enter SnailMailer. Note that "items" refers to individual addresses, so that a sheet of mailing labels might consist of 20 or 30 "items." This means that you can print one sheet at a time by setting the number of items to the number of labels on a sheet.

Saving and Recalling Groups of Names

SnailMailer lets you save (and recall) up to eight groups of names. In other words you can create eight mailing lists. Once you have selected names, as described in the previous section, tap on Save Selection in the Selection menu, and you'll see this screen:

To save a mailing list, enter a name on the dotted line, check the corresponding box, and tap on OK (tap on Cancel if you change your mind). When you install the software, the first two names are filled in as examples, but you can change them (just edit them in the usual way). So for example you might check the top box, change the words "Christmas Card List" to "Newsletter Mailing List", and then tap OK. The names of your lists can be as long as 31 characters.

To recall a list, tap on Recall Selection in the Selection menu, and you'll see this screen:

The only difference, as you can see, is that only the "named lists" will be displayed, and you can't change the names by editing them.

If you recall a list, you can then add (or delete) names from the list, and then re-save the list.

A subtle point - you might create a mailing list, and then at some time later delete one or more of those names from your Address Book. SnailMailer is equipped to handle this situation; if it finds a name missing from the Address Book, it simply deletes that entry from your mailing list as well.

To clear out a mailing list, select Clear Saved Selection from the Selection menu, and you'll see this screen:

You can clear all the names from any of your named mailing lists, or, if you check the top box, you can clear out all your mailing lists. Obviously you want to think carefully before doing this. Tap Cancel if you change your mind about clearing out a list.

Note that none of the actions you take within SnailMailer have any affect on the names in your Address Book itself; they only affect SnailMailer's own mailing lists.

Mail Merge/Forms Design

If you select one or more addresses on the main screen, and tap the Merge button, you'll be brought to this screen (identical to one from PalmPrint):

The difference between printing a memo from SnailMailer and printing the same memo from PalmPrint, is that SnailMailer understands a special notation which allows you to design your own forms and perform mail merge functions, combining the information from the addresses selected on the first screen of SnailMailer with the memo selected on this screen.

The heart of this special notation, seen in the figure above, are pairs of "double-less than" symbols and "double-greater than" symbols, surrounding the names of the fields in the Address Book - <<First name>>,<<City>>, etc. These special symbols ARE found on the built-in keyboard of the Palm, but they have no Graffiti equivalent, so to create a memo containing these symbols, you'll need to use the built-in (pop-up) keyboard (or download them from the desktop). Once you do this once, doing it the second time can be done most simply by copying from the first memo and pasting into a new one. Note carefully: in this manual, we represent these symbols by two separate one-characters symbols (e.g., "less than, less than") because many web browsers don't display these special characters properly. But the proper character to use are SINGLE characters (characters 171and 187 respectively for those with an interest in the details).

Some examples of what you can do with this capability:

Envelope with return address:

My name
My return address

<<First name>> <<Last name>>
<<Address>>
<<City>>, <<State>> <<Zip Code>>

Form letter:

Dear <<Title>> <<Last name>>,

It was a pleasure visiting you today, and discussing how we can help <<Company>> with...

Note that if you have renamed your custom fields ("Custom 1", etc.) with different names, then those NEW names are what SnailMailer will look for when it tries to extract the information from the address book.

If the requested field is empty, of course it won't be printed; if that information is the ONLY information on a given line, the line will be suppressed (so for example in the envelope example above, if the Address is missing, the City, State, and Zip will appear right below the First and last names.

Although we describe this feature as "mail merge", it's worthwhile to realize that there is nothing in the software that limits it to "mail." SnailMailer combines information in a form (the memo) with information in a database. Although the database is limited to the Palm Address Book, nothing prevents you from storing information other than names and addresses in your address book. For example, suppose you put into your address book a list of drugs, and use the custom fields to contain information about the drug - frequency, side effects, etc. Now with an appropriate form, you could use SnailMailer to print out instructions for taking this particular drug. So think "data merge" and not just "mail merge" and the possibilities are endless.

Conditional Mail Merge and other special modes

In addition to the names of the Address fields, there are other special "keywords" which can be used to control the action of the mail merge. These are as follows:

Keyword	Sample usage	Description
Width	<<Width=32>>	Sets a fixed with for subsequent information (e.g., name, address, etc.). Without this setting, all information takes up just the space it needs. With this setting, you can create columns of information which will line up. The width setting remains in effect until changed (or cancelled with <<Width=0>>)
NoPage	<<NoPage>>	Normally, after each address is processed, a "form feed" will be issued so that information from separate addresses will appear one per page. If this keyword is encountered anywhere in the memo, this action is suppressed, so information from multiple addresses will appear on the same page.
HeaderOn HeaderOff	<<HeaderOn>> This is the page header <<HeaderOff>>	When you are printing information from multiple addresses on one page (using the NoPage keyword), you may want information which appears only at the top of the page and is not repeated for each address. To do this, use the <<HeaderOn>> keyword, follow it with the text to be printed on top, and then follow that with the <<HeaderOff>> keyword.
Any label	<<My form letter>>	Any thing enclosed in the special pair of symbols which is NOT otherwise recognized (that is, is not the name of an address field nor one of the special keywords in this table) will be ignored. The most useful application of this feature is to have the first line of the memo be a description of what the memo is to be used for. That way you can have many similar form letters, but have each one distinguished even though the first line of the memo (which is what is displayed when you display a list of memos) is the same.
IfZero IfNonZero	<<City>><<IfZero No city>> <<First name>> <<IfNonZero>><<Last name>>	These keywords refer to the contents of the previous field that has been used, and provide conditional printing of other material. If the keyword is followed by a space and then word or words before the final >>, then the information following the keyword is what will be printed ("No city" in the first example at left, which is printed if the City is zero, i.e., wasn't there). If the keyword is immediately followed by the >>, then this should be followed by another keyword which is a field name, and it is that field which is conditionally printed (in the example at left, the first name is printed (or omitted if it is blank); if and only if there was a first name, then the last name is printed.
NoPrint	<<NoPrint>><<State>> <<IfNonZero , >><<State>>	Sometimes you need to print information BEFORE other information, but only if that information is present (in the example at left, we want to print ", " before the State but only if there is a State). But the IfZero and IfNonZero keywords only apply to a field that has just been used. We need a way to test a field without printing it. To do this, use the NoPrint keyword, which suppresses the printing of the following field. This in the example at left we are able to test the "zero/non-zero-ness" of the State without actually printing it; if it is non-zero, then we print a comma, a space, and then the State itself.
Number	<<27>>K<<7>>	There may be cases when you have a printer which requires certain special codes, like "Escape" sequences, to do certain things (change font, print barcodes, etc.). Enclosing any number with the special brackets will add that character to the string of characters to be printed. Thus the example at left prints "ESC-K-7" which might be relevant on some printer. Special exception: if you need to send a byte (character) whose contents are 0 (NOT the character "0" which has an ASCII code of 48, but an actual zero byte which may be required for some special cases), you must substitute 255 instead. That is, <<0>> is invalid; use <<255>>.

Some examples of what you can do with this capability:

Phone list:

<<Phone list>>
<<HeaderOn>>
Last Name First Home Phone Work Phone
<<HeaderOff>>
<<Width=16>><<Last name>><<Width=8>><<First name>><<Width=14>>
<<Home>><<Work>><<NoPage>> [Note that these last two lines are
one continuous line, despite how they appear in this manual]

Form letter salutation, version 1:

Dear <<Title>><<IfZero Mr.>> <<Last name>>,

This form prints the title and last name if both are present, but if there is no title entered in the address book, it defaults to printing "Mr." (not necessarily a wise thing to do)

Form letter salutation, version 2:

Dear <<NoPrint>><<Title>><<IfZero>><<First name>><<Title>> <<Last name>>,

This form prints the title and last name if both are present, but if there is no title entered in the address book, it prints the first name and last name

Print a barcode:

<<CODE-39 barcode printing>>
<<27>>Z1<<7>><<100>><<Barcode>>

This is an example using a renamed custom field (renamed "Barcode") which will have as its contents a special barcode. SnailMailer could then be used to select not names and addresses, but products, and print out barcodes for the selected product. The various numbers in brackets are the special codes that tell the printer how many characters are in the barcode and the height of the barcode.

For Support

If you have any problems using SnailMailer, you can contact Stevens Creek Software in one of the following ways:

If you need this information quickly, you'll find it on the "About" screen in the software.

Licensing the Software

Limited functionality of SnailMailer (printing up to three envelopes or mailing labels at once) is provided free of charge to licensed users of PalmPrint software. The registration fee for the advanced functionality (creating and managing mailing lists of unlimited size, and using the mail merge capability) of SnailMailer is $19.95 (note that SnailMailer will not work unless you also have registered a copy of PalmPrint). If you haven't yet licensed your copy, you can do so in one of the following ways:

Online:	http://www.stevenscreek.com/palm/pilotorderform.html
Phone:	1-408-725-0424
Fax:	1-408-725-0424
E-mail:	sales@stevenscreek.com
Mail:	Stevens Creek Software 21346 Rumford Drive Cupertino, CA 95014
We accept Visa, MasterCard, and American Express credit cards, and checks made out in U.S. funds. If ordering via fax, e-mail, or mail, be sure to include credit card type, number, and expiration date (if using a credit card), mailing address, e-mail address, and daytime phone number. Please note: A $3.00 order processing charge is added to any order which is not placed through our automated Web site order form (that is, via phone, fax, email, or mail).

Installing SnailMailer in Your PalmPilot

Whether you downloaded the software from our Web site or received it in the mail, you should have a file called Snail.prc on your desktop or laptop computer (on the hard disk or on a floppy diskette). If you have a file named Snail.ZIP, that is not the proper file; that's a compressed or "zipped" file that you must uncompress with standard "unzipping" software (which we do not provide).

If you do not have the file Snail.prc, you cannot proceed. If you do have Snail.prc, here's how to install it on your handheld unit:

From a Macintosh:

Using MacPac Version 1: Run the program InstallApp. Click on the Select button, set the List Files of Type to All Files, locate and select the file Snail.prc, and click Open. Now click on the Install button. The next time you HotSync your Palm, the program will be downloaded.

Using MacPac Version 2: Select the HotSync Manager from the "Instant Palm" menu on the upper right of your menu bar. In the HotSync menu, select Install. Click on the Add To List button. Locate and select the file Snail.prc, and click Add File. The next time you HotSync your Palm, the program will be downloaded.

From Windows:

Using current Palm desktop software: Start your Palm desktop software. Click on the Install button. Check to make sure the User name displayed at the top of the Palm Install Tool window which appears is the user name of the Palm handheld device on which you want to install the software; if not, select the correct user name. Now click on Add. Using the file browser which appears, locate and select the Snail.prc file, and click Open. Now click on the Done button, and then on OK. The next time you HotSync your Palm, the program will be downloaded.

Using old Pilot desktop software: Run the program INSTAPP.EXE (it may be displayed simply as INSTAPP, depending on how you have Windows configured), which is located in the C:/PALM folder. Click on the Browse button, locate and select the Snail.prc file, and click Open. Now click on the Install button. The next time you HotSync your Palm, the program will be downloaded.

Entering Your Serial Number

If you have registered the software, and have obtained a serial number from Stevens Creek Software, tap on the Menu button and select About in the Options menu. This screen will appear:

Now tap on the word *Unlicensed* and you'll see this screen:

Use Graffiti (or the on-screen keyboard) to enter your serial number (supplied to you by Stevens Creek Software); when you're done, tap on the OK button. If you enter an incorrect number, the software will let you know. If necessary, tap on the Cancel button to dismiss the Enter Serial Number screen. When you have entered the Serial Number correctly, the word *Unlicensed* will disappear from the "About" screen and be replaced by your user name.

If you have a site license copy of SnailMailer, the Name field in the Enter Serial Number screen will also be a dotted line in which you can enter information. In this case, you'll need to enter your "site license name" in that field, as well as the Serial Number in the bottom field.

If you run into a problem, this probably means that when you provided your PalmPilot user name to Stevens Creek Software, you did so incorrectly. Check the name in the Enter Serial Number screen shown above, and write it down exactly (including case, i.e., whether the letters are upper-case letters like THIS or lower-case letters like this) and email it to Stevens Creek Software technical support and wait for a new serial number to be provided to you.