Meet the Mini-Calendar

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Meet the Mini-Calendar

February 2003

Scott Holmes
ACT! Certified Consultant

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The Mini-Calendar can also be used to make regular calendar display and navigation easier.

Double click on any day in the Mini-Calendar and you will find yourself in the daily calendar for that date (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Calendar Navigation

Double click on the week letters at the top of the mini calendar and you will find yourself on the weekly calendar for the currently selected date.

Double click on the month name at the top of the Mini-Calendar and you will display the calendar for that month.

Right-click on the month name at the top of the Mini-Calendar, and you can jump back two months, forward up to 6 months, or go directly to Today (Figure 4).

Figure 4. Jump To..

One limitation with the Mini-Calendar is its apparent inability to display anything but consecutive months. If you want to compare two months from two different years for example, you can't do it. Actually you can, sort of... Truth be told, I'm not sure what you would do with this trick but you never know. On any of the three monthly calendars, display the month in the past or future you wish to view. Now in either of the remaining calendars, Right-click Month name and choose Today. The Mini-Calendar will display the current month on the selected calendar, but the other two will not change. To bring all the calendars back into sync, right click on any month name and choose anything other than Today. Of course the obvious limitation is you can only compare with the current month.

Perhaps you would like to have the Mini-Calendar displayed all the time, but feel it's too big and gets in the way. You can change the Mini-Calendar to a single month view if you wish. Choose Edit | Preferences and click the Calendar tab. Place a check in the "When displaying mini-calendar, show only current month" checkbox and click OK. Now the Mini-Calendar will really be "mini", and you can drag it to the corner of your screen so you always have the current month in view.

Is the mini calendar for everyone? Probably not. If your work in ACT! is largely "calendar centric" (that is you spend most of your time in the calendar views), the Mini-Calendar is of limited use. However, if you work mainly in the Contact Views or the Task List, it can be a real timesaver.

Scott Holmes is a consultant with Cornerstone Solutions, Inc. in Houston, TX. He's been a software consultant for 16 years and an ACT! Certified Consultant for 4 years. In that time he has developed numerous ACT! add-on products found at www.cornerstonesolutions.com.