If You Have You Ever Forgotten an Appointment, a Meeting, a Birthday an Anniversary or Some Other Important Event, RemindMe Can Help
You Don't Even Have to Remember to Look Through Your Calendar Every Day - RemindMe Automatically Checks Your File of Reminder Notes Everyday When You Start Up Your PC And Alerts You To Upcoming Events
You Can Use RemindMe To -
Remember your parent's, spouse's, children's and other relative's birthday's with enough fore warning to prevent frantic last minute shopping trips for a gift or remembrance.
Congratulate your friends and the people in your work group on their birthdays. Let them know you care.
Help get you to meetings and appointments on time and prepared.
Jog your memory when tax filings are due, a CD is about to mature or a report is due.
Prevent the last minute anniversary panic. You can be warned weeks in advance.
Each day when you start up your PC, RemindMe looks at your file of reminder notes, checks to see which are imminent and automatically reminds you of any imminent events. This eliminates the problem of you forgetting to check your calendar. Need to check at some other point in the day, a simple request to RemindMe from the DOS command line activates a scan of your reminder notes.
Entering a reminder note is simple. Simply enter the date of the event, how many days in advance you wish to start being reminded about the event, a short description of the event and indicate whether or not you should be reminded about the event every year. Reminder notes for things like birthdays can be put in just once and RemindMe will jog your memory every year. Non-recurring events, such as a lunch appointment, are automatically discarded after the event occurs.
RemindMe runs on IBM compatible PC's or clones that have a hard disk with at least 100k bytes of free space, 640K of RAM and are running DOS 3.0 or higher.
If you like and use RemindMe please send $29 to CATO Graphics and we will send you the fully functional version of RemindMe. It does not have the shareware reminder message that comes up every time you start up your PC. You will only be alerted when there is an event you wished to be reminded about. To order the fully functional version send $29 to Cato Graphics, 5807 Highland Pass, Austin, Texas 78731. Please specify whether you want 5 1/4" or 3 1/2" floppy disks. We'll send you a manual also. Texas residents please add your sales tax.
General
RemindMe is a software program for PC's that automatically jogs your memory about upcoming events. Each day when you start up your PC, RemindMe looks at your file of reminder notes, checks to see which are imminent and automatically reminds you of any of the imminent events. You don't have to remember to thumb thru your calendar for the next week or two to see what is coming up. Need to check at some other point in the day, a simple request to RemindMe from the DOS command line activates a search of your reminder notes.
Adding a reminder note to your file of events is simple. Even a person that has trouble using word processor software will find RemindMe easy to use. Simply enter the date of the event, how many days in advance you wish to start being reminded about the event, a short description of the event and tell RemindMe whether you should be reminded about the event every year. Reminder notes for things like birthdays can be put in just once and RemindMe will jog your memory every year. You are reminded normally about non-recurring events, such as a doctor's appointment, then they are automatically discarded after the event occurs.
This version of RemindMe is shareware. Pass it along to others.
Installation
Installation is simple, just follow the following steps:
(1) Put the distribution diskette that came in your RemindMe package in the "A" drive of your PC and make the that drive ready.
(2) At the DOS prompt type A: and press the Enter key.
(3) Type INSTALL and press the Enter key.
The short installation program will now proceed to install RemindMe. If you have more than one logical disk drives on your system, the installation program will ask you on which drive that you wish RemindMe to be installed on. The installation program will make a directory named ZREM on the drive that you specify and place the program and its initial file of reminder notes in that directory.
In addition the installation program will add a line to your AUTOEXEC.BAT file, that will cause RemindMe to automatically check your file of reminder notes to see which are imminent and remind you of any of the imminent events. Also the installation program will add two batch files to the root directory of your C drive. These are REMADD.BAT and REMCK.BAT. REMADD will be used by you to add reminder notes to your file of reminder notes and REMCK will be used by you to check on for imminent events if you need to do so at any point after your PC has automatically done the checking when it was started up.
Opening the Control Panel for Adding, Modifying and Deleting Reminder Notes
At the DOS prompt type REMADD and press the Enter key. The RemindMe control panel will now pop up on your screen. To the close the control panel just press the F5 function key.
Searching Through Your Reminder Notes
A good way to verify that the installation is okay is to search through your file of reminder notes. A start up set of reminder notes is provided with RemindMe that includes some national holidays that you can search through.
At the DOS prompt type REMADD and press the Enter key to open the control panel. The RemindMe control panel will now pop up on your screen. To search through the reminder notes simply press the F4 function key. You will step through the reminder notes one at a time as you press the F4 function key. To quit just press the F5 function key.
Adding Reminder Notes
With the RemindMe control panel already open (see Opening the Control Panel for Adding, Modifying and Deleting Reminder Notes), press the F1 function key. The add function is enabled. Notice that the labels on the function keys on the lower part of the control panel have changed.
Pressing the F1 lets you enter the date of the event that you wish to be reminded about. Notice that today's date appears on the screen. The first two digits represent the month. The middle two digits represent the day of the month and the last two digits are the last two digits of the year. When you enter a date you must enter it in the same format as you see on the screen. Two digits for the month, a slash, two digits for the day of the month (05 for the fifth day, NOT just a 5), a slash and two digits for the year. For example 06/05/92 is the way to represent June 5, 1992.
Caution. Since personal computers commonly only use two digits to represent the year in their built in clock, it is important for you to recognize that any two digit year value that you put in that is less than 90 will be treated as a sometime after the year 2000. For example if Aunt Mathilda's birth year is 1938 and for the two digit year value you enter 38, RemindMe will think you are talking about 2038, not 1938. So, just put in her birthday for this year (i.e. 1993) 93.
To change the date on the screen to the date of the event you wish to be reminded about press the Backspace key to remove enough of the current date so that you can enter the correct date of the event you wish to be reminded about.
When you have correctly entered the date of the event you wish to be reminded about press the Enter key to accept the date. You will then be asked whether you wish to be reminded about the event every year. For a birthday for example you would press the Y key for yes, so that you would be reminded every year on that date. For something like a doctors appointment that does not repeat every year on the same date, you would press the N key for no.
Remember that some national holidays do not occur on the same date every year. Thanksgiving is an example of a holiday that falls on different dates on different years.
Press the F2 to enter a short description of the event that you wish to be reminded about. Something like "Mary's Birthday" or "Sales Meeting at 10:30AM". You can use the Backspace key to correct typing mistakes.
When you have correctly entered the description of the event you wish to be reminded about press the Enter key to accept the description.
Finally, press the F3 to enter the number of days of prior warning you wish to have for the event. This allows you to define whether an event is imminent Notice that the number 7 appears on the screen to represent 7 days of advance notice. You can use the Backspace key to delete the 7 and enter your own choice for the number of days of advance notice. Each day as you start up your computer, you will be reminded about any event that is within the advance notice window and the actual date of the event. When you have correctly entered the number of days of advance notice press the Enter key to accept it.
Look over your reminder note to make sure everything is correct. If you wish to change one of the elements, press the appropriate function key and make your changes. If you suddenly decide that you don't want that reminder note after all, you can press the Esc key to discard it. If all is correct and you are ready to save the reminder note, press the F4 function key.
This now takes you back to the main control panel that came up when you typed in REMADD.
Modifying Reminder Notes
With the RemindMe control panel already open (see Opening the Control Panel for Adding, Modifying and Deleting Reminder Notes), search through your reminder notes till the one you want to modify is shown on the screen. Press the F2 function key. Then modify which ever element of the note you wish to change in the same way described in the section on adding a reminder note.
Deleting Reminder Notes
With the RemindMe control panel already open (see Opening the Control Panel for Adding, Modifying and Deleting Reminder Notes), search through your reminder notes till the one you want to delete is shown on the screen. Press the F3 function key. It is gone.
Using RemindMe
Checking For Imminent Events
Each day when you start up your PC, the RemindMe line in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file will cause RemindMe to automatically check your file of reminder notes to see which are imminent and remind you of any of the imminent events.
At any other time you can ask RemindMe to check your file of reminder notes by typing at the DOS prompt REMCK and pressing the Enter key.
Getting Started
Put in a couple of test reminder notes about some fictious event for tomorrow and the next day. Answer "N" for no when RemindMe asks you whether you want to be reminded every year about the event. That way RemindMe will automatically discard those test notes after the date for them passes.
After you have finished adding those reminder notes and are back at the DOS prompt, you can press the Ctrl, the Alt and Del keys simultaneously. This will cause your computer to re-boot (or start up). The test reminder messages that you have entered should be displayed as reminder notes as your computer restarts. If not then, use the search function and then the modify function to correct the errors in the reminder notes you just entered.
The search function is handy in that it allows you to check over all of your reminder notes.
Things To Keep in Mind
It is vital that you keep the date and time settings on your PC accurate. RemindMe depends on these being set correctly. Refer to your PC's manual on setting the correct time and date.
If there is any trick to using RemindMe, it is to put in the things you want to be reminded about quickly. Don't wait. RemindMe can't jog your memory about things that you have not put in your reminder notes file.
Obviously, personal things like relatives birthdays, an anniversary etc. will have to be added by you. If your are adding a reminder note about a meeting that is scheduled for a particular time of day, just include the meeting time in the description of the event.
Sooner or later your hard disk is going to fail. When this happens, you can use your RemindMe floppy disk to re-install RemindMe on your new hard disk. The reminder notes are stored in a file named ZREME.DAT that is located in the directory named ZREM on your C drive or if you have more than one logical disk drive it will be on the disk drive that you selected at the time of installation. It is a good idea to make a back up copy of this file on a floppy disk after you have entered all your reminder notes. Consult your PC's DOS manual on how to make a copy of a file.
New Features for RemindMe
If you have an idea for new features or functions that you would like to see in RemindMe just drop us a line with a short description of the features or functions that you would like to see added to RemindMe.
