What format should I type my diary in?

September 26, 2022 3:32 PM

For years, I've kept a diary where I see multiple years on the same page (this one, among others). I've decided I would enjoy going through my older ones and typing them into some sort of document. How should I do this? I'd like to keep the one day / multiple years format.

I have a Mac. This would be for myself; I don't plan on sharing it in any way. I've deliberately kept it on the boring side, though, so I don't need any more security than my computer already has. I'm up for buying software, but I don't want to use anything so niche that I can't open the file in ten years.

posted by The corpse in the library to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

Someone here on AskMe recommended DayOne to me, and I am going to pass this along to you! It lets you see entries from previous years on that day, and has an export format that does this, too. I have been super happy with them as a very heavy user they’ve had very responsive support and have even implemented features I’ve asked for! On the phone app the look back at entries from previous years is a nice scroll showing them in chronological order. I don’t have a Mac computer, so I don’t know what it’ll look like there but it’s free to try so I would give it a shot and see if you like it. I’m actually in the market for a used Mac laptop because I like this app so much I want to be able to more easily use it.
posted by Bottlecap at 3:47 PM on September 26, 2022

I have the desktop AND iOS version of Day One. I started paying for a premium subscription when the pandemic happened as I wanted to save off some documentation about “life during covid times” and there is a limitation on how many photos/docs/doc types you can add without the subscription.

It has been worth. every. cent and I’ve renewed it for the last two years,

I highly recommended it, even if you are just transcribing your existing journal entries into a digital format and I’m pretty certain you don’t need the premium subscription to do that. One of its best features is the ability to backdate the entries - so if you have an entry from Jan 1, 2005 you can set the entry date in the journal to Jan 1, 2005. And the look back feature mentioned by Bottlecap is really nice.

You can also do searches on the desktop version by year, date, custom tags. There is all sorts of flexibility built into the app. I love it.
posted by theBigRedKittyPurrs at 5:02 PM on September 26, 2022

I also use DayOne and love it! For all the reasons people are mentioning.

I use it on a Mac, on my phone, and on an iPad. It always looks good, it's pretty powerful, and it's easy to use.
posted by Well I never at 5:59 PM on September 26, 2022

If you wanted to go with no special-purpose software, it can be done in excel or sharepoint. What you do is make a table that has separate columns for month, day, year, and remarks.

With month, day, and year separate, then you simply change the sort order to month, then day, THEN year. Then you'd end up with something like

1 1 2020
1 1 2021
1 1 2022
1 2 2020
1 2 2021
1 2 2022
etc.
posted by ctmf at 3:12 AM on September 27, 2022

I'm a happy DayOne user on iOS. I wish they had a Windows version.
posted by kathrynm at 10:26 AM on September 27, 2022

Response by poster: Can a document saved in DayOne be opened using other applications? I worry about committing to one company's future.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:13 AM on September 28, 2022

Response by poster: Never mind, answered my own question: yes, it can export as PDF, plain text, and JSON.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:23 AM on September 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

I’d be inclined to use Markdown. I feel like that’ll be very future proof, as it’s just plain text at the end of the day.
posted by backwards guitar at 2:29 PM on September 29, 2022