Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with reminders

How to disable Dismiss All button for Outlook reminders window?

RobinFiveWords — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:50:43 -0800

I'd like to find a hack that disables the "Dismiss All" button in my Microsoft Outlook reminders window. Windows XP. I maintain a to-do list at work by using Outlook reminders, for tasks and for messages in my Inbox. I prefer keyboard shortcuts over clicking mouse buttons, and one of my common keystrokes is [Alt]-A. When the reminders window is the active window, however, [Alt]-A is the command for "Dismiss All". As I hit [Alt]-A hundreds of times per day, I accidentally dismiss all reminders at least once per week. Then I have to go back through my Inbox and my tasks and reset the reminder in each of the dozens of items that was just dismissed.

[For your trouble: If anyone would like to resize the reminders window, I recommend ResizeEnable. Low-impact hack that is easy enough to turn on and off.]

Location-based reminders for Blackberry

jinatrix — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 12:05:29 -0800

Is there an application for Blackberry that has the ability to give location-specific reminders? The goal: to be able to specify reminders to only go off when the device is in a specified geographic area. Example - I need to pick up something I left at a friend's house, but I only want to be reminded when I am in the vicinity of his house.

Is there a standalone blackberry app that provides this, or a web-based app that can work with location information provided by, for example, google latitude, and generate SMS/email reminders?

Filling up with warm fuzzies before relationship hibernation

itesser — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 03:14:54 -0800

Ideas for things to do with my husband before he goes off for three months of job training? He's leaving in two weeks. Besides lots of quality time, does the hivemind have suggestions for things I/we can do to prepare for the long quality time drought? We'll only be able to write (paper and stamps) letters, and have never been apart for more than three nights, much less out of phone/email/im/texting contact that long.

We're both artists in our mid-twenties, together for 2.5 years. I'm not big on scrapping types of crafts

Current plans:
- Taking lots of pictures with my film camera... enough so I can develop a roll each week he's gone.
- zipping up a couple shirts of his in plastic bags to preserve "husband smell"
- try to record the sound of his heartbeat/breathing while he's asleep for my mp3 player

Restrictions:
- We're being extra frugal to save up for the move we'll be doing after he's done with training
- I'm flying cross-country to spend the 3 months with friends, so nothing to "create together" that might be bulky or difficult to transport
- I don't want to put a lot of pressure on him to do things for me, so suggestions of things I can do the heavy lifting on would be best.

Advance thanks!

How do I get gmail to stop forwarding calendar reminders to another email address?

johnofjack — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 12:44:26 -0800

How do I get GMail to stop sending random reminders to the wrong email address? A few days ago, some but not all of my Google calendar reminders started showing up in my Yahoo inbox rather than my Gmail inbox.

I've checked the events which show up in the Yahoo inbox but not the Gmail inbox. I am not listed as a guest, and Gmail doesn't even have my Yahoo address listed as a contact.

The emails that show up have the wrong address listed as subscribed for reminders, and they tell me I can log in to http://www.google.com/calendar/ to change my notifications settings.

When I log in at that address, click "calendars," and then click "notifications," all I see is a series of boxes about whether to receive reminders and whether they should be by email or SMS. None of it indicates any certain email address to send emails to.

I can not find my Yahoo address listed anywhere in my Google settings--it's not as a rule under the Filter tab (I have no filters in place); it's not listed to forward to under the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab; and it's not even listed as an associated email address under "My Account."

Where is this Yahoo email address set as receiving reminders? Why does it receive only some of my reminders rather than all of them or none of them? How do I make all of the reminders go to the GMail address only?

Any ideas?

Hot to stop Outlook reminders from hiding behind other open programs

IndigoJones — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 09:04:54 -0800

Co-worker's Outlook (2003) reminders pop up fifteen minutes and five minutes before appointments, but invariably hide behind whatever application is being worked on. Meetings are being missed or appearances are late because of this. How to make the reminders less shy? My searching turns up nothing.

Email / SMS reminders w/Exchange

cowmix — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 13:13:59 -0800

I there a way to have Exchange email or SMS meeting reminders to your cell phone? I want to have email / sms reminders of meetings in my Exchange calender sent to my cell phone. Is there a cheap / easy way to set this up w/o getting the Exchange admin involved. If I have to get them involved, how complicated is that?

Palm III: Yea nor Nea

DU — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 05:14:41 -0800

Palm III: retro or hopelessly obsolete? Either my brain is shrinking or my life is expanding--either way, I can no longer hold all the detail and context I'd like to. Websites I want to visit, books I want to look for at the library, TV shows I want to watch and lists of numbers I want to track are among the things I've had to devise tricks to remember, such as setting timers or emailing myself at another location. The web of tricks is woefully inadequate on many levels, from not being portable to mortgaging my future attention to serve my current needs.

I finally remembered that I have a working Palm III that I stopped using a few years ago because I'd have to jump through a lot of security hurdles to use it at work. But it's reached the point where the hurdles are less annoying than the loss of information, so I'm going to pick it up again.

But will I be able to find applications for it anymore? Some of these needs can be met by a stock Palm III. But I'd also like some kind of generalized spreadsheet/graphing app and I will likely find other needs/wants. I googled around a little and found some crippled shareware--is that all there is anymore? Would I be better off just getting a small notebook (i.e. actual dead trees)?

To Do application with task-specific reminder options?

thatgirl — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 12:05:15 -0800

Is there a To Do/task list application that offers reminder options per task? There are a lot of To Do applications out there, and I've poked around in a few of them. (Remember The Milk, Zoho Planner, Todoist, Backpack, Vitalist -- which is my favorite so far-- etc.) Most of them offer to send you reminders for your tasks, and most of them allow you to choose to receive these reminders by email, text message, or both. However, I haven't yet found one that allows me to choose a reminder method PER TASK. If you set it to email you your reminders, you have no choice but to get ALL of your reminders by email.

I generally prefer to receive my reminders by email, since I don't have a PDA and don't want to pay for text messages all the time or have to buy a bundle package. So I always set my option to email. But! Sometimes, there are certain tasks that I would like to be reminded of by text message instead of or in addition to email. For example, "Charge cell phone." Or, when I know I won't be at my computer that night, "Call so-and-so".

So does anyone know of a (web) To Do/task list application that offers task-specific reminder options?

Website maintenance.

10ch — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 18:23:18 -0800

How do you keep your websites properly maintained? I'm what you might call a Typical Webmaster.

I manage a big, big site (a school site for a university), five big sites (different departments within the school) and then a couple handfuls of event-based, research-based or student-org-based websites. There are probably 20 in total.

It's just me doing the design, code and maintenance for these sites. This means that they get created (or upgraded) and then all too quickly outdated because I have zero time to spend working on them post launch.

If people notify me of updates or corrections, I make them. But I am unable to be proactive with that end of things because we're either busy creating new sites or upgrading outdated ones.

We're employing content management systems where they make sense and are doing what we can to keep content fresh and up-to-date, but that plan is only as good as the folks who create the content are at creating it.

What I'm looking for is some sort of system to remind me to bug various "owners" of information on a sometimes random/sometimes routine basis.

There probably isn't an easy answer for this, but if you've got an electronic or hipster-variety tickler/reminder system that works well for you -- or have had any success in managing higher ed websites (or just a random slew) -- I'd appreciate hearing about your strategies and/or successes.

I'll be happy to chime in if I've left any details out that need further explanation or elaboration.

Automatically remind me of all appointments?

anomie — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 07:40:02 -0800

OutlookFilter: Remind me of all appointments? When people send me meetings, most of the time the reminder box is checked, but sometimes it is not. If I don't have a reminder, I will sit at my computer coding and have no idea I am missing a meeting. I see no point in having an appointment with no reminder, so I would like Outlook to remind me 15 minutes before every appointment. Help!

Practical Jewelry

sourwookie — Fri, 08 Apr 2005 09:25:34 -0800

I need help finding inexpensive metal rings with a single letter on them. In an attempt to change some habits, I've decided that as a concrete reminder that some nice-looking rings, each with a letter on them (that has a meaning to me) may do the trick. I would like them to be silver in color, kinda elegant, and less than 10 bucks a pop. The idea is that everytime I look an see the "P" on my finger I will straighten my posture, or when I put on the "T" before I go out to the bars I will remember to talk less.

Free e-mail reminders

exhilaration — Sat, 26 Mar 2005 14:00:37 -0800

Can anyone recommend a good, free "reminders by e-mail" service? I'd like to get an e-mail on a certain day, at a certain time, reminding me to do something. Preferably from someone reputable, that won't sell me out to spammers. Or maybe a PHP application that I can run on my own server to do the same thing? Something easier to use than scheduling dozens of cron jobs?

Online Calendars

grumblebee — Sun, 05 Dec 2004 10:41:48 -0800

As a follow-up to this question, I'm looking for an online application that will let me set up a calendar and will email me daily reminders of the day's events. I need to do this online, because I move around a lot and am constantly using different PCs (so an Outlook/Eudora/Etc. solution won't work). I would like to be able to get a reminder the night before and one the morning-of. Google suggests there are several such services. Are there any really good ones? Bonus: Has anyone invented one that will phone you or leave your a text message?

I'm having some trouble generating a custom e-mail reminder for certain events in Applescript.

adamrice — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 13:09:26 -0800

Applescript help, please. I'm trying to generate a custom e-mail reminder for certain events [MI] I'm using iCal to schedule events, and what I want to do is send a customized message to a group address--perversely, iCal has a built-in feature for e-mailing reminders, but doesn't seem to let you remind anyone other than yourself. I'd also like to customize the text of the reminder.

Here's what I've got:

try

	beep

	tell application "iCal"

		set theloc to location of this

		set thetime to startdate of this

		set thesum to summary of this

		set thenotes to description of this

		set theAddress to [some address]

		set theSender to [some address]

	end tell

	set theSubject to "Reminder" & thesum & " at " & theloc & " on " & thetime

	set theBody to thenotes

	tell application "Mail"

		launch

		set newMessage to make new outgoing message with properties {subject:theSubject, content:theBody & return & return}

		tell newMessage

			set visible to false

			set sender to theSender

			make new to recipient at end of to recipients with properties {address:theAddress}

		end tell

	end tell

end try

The problem clearly is with "this". I need to pass the iCal event that called the script as a parameter somehow.

Thanks in advance