Hands High Software, Inc.
© 2001-2002 Hands High
Software, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
ThoughtManager Desktop 1.0 for
use with Windows computers
This manual, as well as the
software described in it, is furnished under license and may only be used or
copied in accordance with the terms of such license. The information in this
manual is furnished for informational use only, is subject to change without
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Table
of Contents
Introduction 5
What Can You Do With ThoughtManager? 5
Organizational Features 5
Installation 6
What Gets Installed 6
Into the ThoughtManager
Directory: 6
Into Your Palm Directory: 6
Into your Windows directory: 6
Quick Start Tutorial 7
Choose the Palm User 7
Creating a New Outline 7
Outline List 8
Creating Items 8
Synchronize 9
Managing Outlines 10
The Outline List 10
Handheld Outlines 10
Handheld Templates 11
Desktop Outlines and Templates 11
Conflicts 11
Categorizing Outlines 11
Editing Outlines 13
Creating a New Outline 13
Changing the Title 13
Changing the Category 13
Security 13
Editing Items 14
Splitting/Joining 14
Organizing 14
Attaching Notes and Drawings 14
Filing Cabinet 16
Working with Checkboxes 16
Finding and Replacing 16
Choosing a Font 17
Printing 18
Preferences 20
Desktop Directory 20
Fonts 20
Save New Outlines Into 21
Auto Create New Outline 21
Synchronization 22
Conflicts 22
File Names 22
Choosing the Current User 22
Importing and Exporting 23
Microsoft Word Format 23
Palm Database Format (.PDB) 23
Ideas for use 25
Creating Handheld References 25
Brainstorming 25
Meeting Agendas and Notes 25
Task Lists 26
Project Management 26
Education 27
Assessment 27
Lesson Plans 27
Organizing Tasks & Ideas 27
Note Taking & Research 27
Product Testing and QA 28
Medical Care 28
Welcome to ThoughtManager Desktop, the easiest to use,
most versatile organizer for the Palm OS.
This Users Manual describes the operation of the desktop
component of ThoughtManager, and also discusses synchronization. You will find
a companion manual included with the package that covers the operation of
ThoughtManager on the handheld device.
With ThoughtManager, you can create plans, deliver
reference information, organize thoughts, write speeches, take notes, organize
and track complex tasks, track collections, make shopping lists, prepare for
camping trips, and lots more. Thought Manager is an organizational tool that is
only limited by your own creativity. See Ideas for Using
ThoughtManager for more ideas on how to use ThoughtManager in specific
situations.
Some of the many features you will find in ThoughtManager
include:
|
Powerful Drag & Drop
Outlining
|
Easy to use
and powerful. Click on a bullet and drag it where you want to organize your
outline.
|
|
Synchronization
|
Two-way
synchronization between your desktop computer and handheld device. Change an
outline on one side, and your changes will appear on the other after
synchronizing.
|
|
Notes and Drawings
|
Attach a
note or drawing to any item to further describe it.
|
|
Checkboxes
|
Turn on
checkboxes and turn your outline into a hierarchical checklist or project
plan. Checked items can be hidden or permanently deleted, so you only have to
see what is left to do. You can also uncheck all checked items to start over.
|
|
Templates
|
Outlines
can be saved as templates and recalled easily. This is great for lists of
things that you have to do often.
|
|
Word Import and Export
|
If you have
Microsoft Word 97 or above, you can easily import and export files to and
from Word. Helps you turn your ideas into a finished document.
|
|
Outline List View
|
You
don’t need to fumble around searching for your outlines on your hard
disk. All your outlines are easily accessible in one list on the screen. Move
outlines off your handheld to your desktop by simply dragging and dropping.
|
To install, simply double-click on the TMDesktop.exe file
and answer the questions as the installer presents them. Be sure to select the
correct user name if you synchronize multiple handheld devices to the same
desktop computer.
The following files get installed to your hard disk:
|
ThoughtManager.exe
|
The
ThoughtManager Program
|
|
WordAPI.DLL and ResPrj.DLL
|
Support
files for ThoughtManager
|
|
ThoughtManager.chm
|
The online
Help file
|
|
TM Desktop.pdf
|
The desktop
user manual
|
|
TM Palm.pdf
|
The
handheld user manual
|
|
TFCnd.DLL
|
The
ThoughtManager Conduit, which synchronizes your outlines between your
handheld device and ThoughtManager desktop
|
|
ThoughtManager.prc
|
ThoughtManager
on the Palm software. This is put in your Install directory so that the next
time you HotSync, ThoughtManager for the Palm will be installed on your
handheld device.
|
|
TM_Fileio.dll
|
Support
files.
|
The following tutorial will take you through the basics of
creating an outline in ThoughtManager desktop and synchronizing it to your
Palm.
Make sure that the correct user name is chosen from the
user drop down box. Most people only have one Palm user name, but some have
more than one. The user name determines which handheld device your outlines
will synchronize to.
Choose New from the file menu to create a new outline. At
the top of the outline window you will see the title, category and private
status of the outline. Your outline will initially be titled “Untitled”
and will contain one blank item. Change the title to “Test Outline”
and change the category to “Business”.
Choose Save from the File menu. Notice that “Test
Outline” appears in the Handheld Outlines section of the List View on the
left. This indicates that the next time you synchronize, your outline will be
copied to your handheld device.
If you did not want to transfer the outline to your
handheld device, you could drag it to the Desktop Outlines folder, but for now
we will leave it in the Handheld Outlines section. For more details on how to
manage outlines in the Outline List, see the Managing Outlines chapter.
Click on the first line of the Test Outline window and
enter the words “This is a sample item”. Then press the Return key.
Notice that a new item is created. Enter “This is line 2” into the
second item.
Now click on the bullet of the second line and drag it to
the right, then let go. You will now see that line two is indented. You can
click and drag items to create a hierarchy, or to reorganize them, moving items
up or down. You can also indent an item by pressing the Tab key, or move an
item to the left by holding the shift key down and pressing the Tab key.
Clicking on an arrow will collapse it and hide the items underneath of it.
For more information on working with outlines, see the
Editing Outlines chapter.
Choose Save from the File menu. Put you handheld device in
its cradle and press the HotSync button. After synchronization is complete, start
ThoughtManager on your handheld device. You should see a list of outlines that
looks the same as the list of outlines in the Handheld Outlines section of the
Outline List.
Tapping on the Test Outline item will go to the outline on
your handheld device.
From here on, if you make a change to the outline on the
handheld device, and then synchronize, the change will be copied to the
desktop. And if you make a change to the outline in ThoughtManager Desktop, and
then synchronize, the change will be copied to the Palm.
The outline list gives you easy access to your
ThoughtManager outlines and lets you move outlines to and from your handheld
device. To show an outline, simply click on it and the outline will appear to the
right of the list.
You can hide the outline list by clicking the Close Box.
This will give you more room on your screen to edit outlines. To show the
outline list again, choose Show Outline List from the Window menu.
The Outline List is organized into folders that represent
different parts of your hard disk, and have different functions, as follows:
The outlines in this section are the ones that synchronize
with the main list of outlines in your handheld device. This list will also appear
on your handheld device. Changes to these outlines are copied to the handheld,
and changes to the outlines on the handheld are copied to the desktop when you
synchronize.
To remove an outline from your handheld, but keep it on
your desktop, drag the outline to the Desktop Outlines folder.
The handheld outlines are located on your hard disk in
your Palm/User Name/ThoughtManager directory, and have a “.tmo”
extension
Like the outlines in the Handheld Outlines section, the
templates in the Handheld Outlines synchronize with your handheld device. They
appear on your handheld in the template list.
Templates allow you to easily make a copy of an outline to
start a new outline. For example, perhaps you have created an outline that
helps you plan workshops. You can drag this outline to the Handheld Templates
section so that you can easily create multiple outlines from it. To create a
new outline from a template, drag the template from the Handheld Templates
section to the Handheld Outlines section or Desktop Outlines section. The
outline will be become a new outline in that section. You can drag a template
to either the Handheld Outlines section or Desktop Outlines section, and it
will be copied. If you drag the template to the Desktop Templates section, it
will be moved to that section and removed from your handheld the next time you
HotSync.
Templates are located on your hard disk in your Palm/User
Name/ThoughtManager directory, and have a “.tmt” extension.
These two sections are places to keep outlines and
templates that you do not want on your handheld device. Outlines in these
sections do not appear on your handheld and do not synchronize.
Outlines in these sections are located on your hard disk
in the My Documents/ThoughtManager directory. You can change the location of
this directory by choosing Preferences from the File menu.
When an outline that is located in the Handheld Outlines
section is changed on both the handheld and desktop, and then synchronized, it
causes a conflict. The handheld outline is copied to the desktop, and the
desktop outline is moved to the Conflicts folder. Also, a message is put in the
HotSync log file to notify you that this happened.
If you see an outline in the Conflicts folder, you should
open it and copy your changes back to the outline in the Handheld Outlines
section, delete the outline in the Conflicts folder and then synchronize again.
If you have a large number of outlines, categories can help
you organize them.
You can assign a category to an outline by doing one of
the following:
1) Choosing
the category from the category selector next to the title of the outline in the
outline’s window
2) Right
clicking on the outline’s category in the category column of the Outline
List.
You can limit the view of the outlines to those in a
particular category by choosing the category from the Category Selector in the
Outline List.
To edit your categories, and create new ones, choose Edit
Categories from the View menu at the top.
Choose New from the File menu or click the New button in
the toolbar to create a new outline.
Change the title of the outline to a title of your choice.
Choose Save from the File menu and the new title will also appear in the
Outline List.
Expert Info: When
you first create an outline and edit the title, the file name of the outline on
your hard disk will automatically be changed to reflect the title. However,
once the outline has been synchronized, the file name will not change when you
change the title. The file name is what matches the outline with the same
outline on the handheld. If you manually change the file name using Windows
Explorer and then synchronize, you will lose any changes you made to the
outline on your handheld device since the last time you synchronized.
Select the category you want for your outline from the
category drop down. After synchronization, your outline will appear in this
category on the handheld as well. If you don’t see a category you like,
you can create a new one by choosing Edit Categories from the drop down, or
from the View menu.
The lock icon marks the outline as private on the handheld
device. The outline will be hidden on the handheld if the security settings are
set up. See the Private setting in Using ThoughtManager on the Handheld device
for more information on the private setting. Note that the lock icon does not
hide outlines on your desktop computer.
Just type in an item to enter text into the item. Press
Return to start a new item.
To split an item into two items, click where you want to
split the item and press the return key. Similarly, you can click in the front of
an item and press the backspace key to join it with its previous item.
Indent an item to show its relationship to another item by
pressing the Tab key, or by clicking on its bullet and moving it to the right.
Shift-Tab will move the item to the left.
Note that you can only indent an item one level greater
than its parent item.
Once an item is indented, its parent item will have an
arrow instead of a bullet next to it. Click on the arrow to collapse or expand
it, which will show or hide the child items related to that item.
Items can be moved between outlines by bringing the both
outlines on the screen and dragging the item from one item to the other. To
duplicate the item, hold the Ctrl key down while dragging.
Attach a note to an item by clicking on it, and choosing
Attach Note from the Item menu or by using the note icon button.
Enter your note and press OK. The item will then have a
small note icon next to it. To get back to the note, click on the note icon.
To attach a drawing, click on an item and choose Attach
Drawing from the Item menu.
Go to a graphics application, like Paint, and copy a
picture from there. Return to ThoughtManager and choose paste from the Edit
menu in the picture viewer. You can also import bitmap images by using the
choosing Open from the file menu. The picture will then be pasted into the
picture viewer, and will be transferred to your handheld device the next time
you HotSync.
Handheld pictures are 160 pixels wide by 140 pixels high.
If you paste a picture that is too big, the picture will be cropped to match
these sizes.
Click the filing cabinet icon to quickly show the filing
cabinet outline. The filing cabinet outline is a place to temporarily put items
that you may be moving between items or between outlines. To put an item in the
filing cabinet outline, either drag the item from your outline onto the filing
cabinet outline, or right click on the item and choose Move Item To Filing
Cabinet from the menu.
You can quickly delete the items in the filing cabinet by
choosing Empty Filing Cabinet from the Edit menu.
Checkboxes let you turn an outline into a hierarchical
checklist. This is great for task lists, shopping lists, or project plans. You can
choose to show checkboxes, hide checkboxes, or hide checked items by making the
appropriate choice in the View menu or from the checkbox toolbar.
You can also delete all checked items by choosing Delete
Checked Items from the Edit menu, or you can uncheck all the items by choosing
Uncheck All Checked Items from the Edit menu.
To find particular words or letters in an outline, open
the outline you want to search, and then choose Find from the Edit menu.
Enter the words you want to find and press the Find Next
button. Once the first item is found, choose Find Next from the Edit menu, or
press the F3 key to find the next occurrence of your word.
Select “Match whole word only” to match only
words rather than parts of words. Select “Match Case” to match the
words and that upper and lower case of the letters in the words.
To replace words in an item, choose Replace from the Edit
menu.
Enter the words to find, and the words you want to replace
them with. Click the Find button to find the words, and if the words are found,
click the Replace button to replace them. To automatically replace all the
matches in the whole outline, click the Replace All button.
Before selecting Replace from the Edit menu, you can limit
the area where you want to replace text by selecting it first, and then
selecting Replace in Selection.
Choose Font from the View menu to change the font of the
entire outline. This will be the font that the outline is viewed and printed.
As you select a font, you will notice a message at the
bottom of the Font dialog about how the font will look on the screen and
printed. If you choose a screen font, the operating system will choose a
different font when you print, and you might not get the results you expect. Be
sure to choose a font that looks good on the screen and on the printer.
Select Print from the File menu to print an outline.
Most of the options will depend on your printer.
Select the Print Hidden Items option to print all the
items in your outline. If you do not check this, only the visible items will be
printed.
Select the Print Notes option to print any attached notes
associated with an item. The note text is printed below the item on the page.
To see what a page will look like when printed, without
actually printing it, choose Print Preview from the File menu.
Choose Preferences from the File menu to bring up the
Preferences dialog.
The outlines that are listed in the Desktop Outlines and
Desktop Templates section of the Outline List are stored on your hard disk in
the directory pointed to by the “My documents directory” setting.
You may change the directory to which this points to by clicking the Browse
button.
The outlines that the Handheld Outline section and
Handheld Templates section show are stored in your Palm directory on your hard
disk. You cannot change this.
You can change the font of the Outline List or the text in
the outlines by clicking the Select button next to the appropriate setting.
Note that the Outline font is the font used to display the outline on the
screen, and also to print the outline.
If your printer does not have a font that matches the
Outline font, Windows will substitute a different font when printing. To see
your outline in the same font it will print, be sure to choose a printer font
or a TrueType font for your Outline font.
When you save a new outline, it is automatically placed in
your Handheld Outlines section by default. You can change this to automatically
save outlines in your Desktop Outlines section by selecting Desktop Outlines
section from the Save New Outlines drop down menu.
When you first start the program, ThoughtManager will show
the outlines on the screen that were there when you exited the program. If no
outlines are on the screen, ThoughtManager will instead create a new, Untitled
Outline. To change ThoughtManager so that it will leave the screen blank,
uncheck the Auto-create New Outline checkbox
When you synchronize your handheld device by putting it in
the cradle and pressing the HotSync button, the ThoughtManager conduit software
will synchronize the outlines on your handheld with the outlines that are in
the Handheld Outlines and Handheld Templates sections of your desktop software.
Any desktop outline that was changed since the last
Hotsync operation is copied to the handheld device, and similarly and handheld
outline that was changed is copied to the desktop.
If both the desktop outline and handheld outline were
changed, the handheld outline is copied to the desktop and put in the Handheld
Outlines section, but the desktop outline is copied to the Conflicts section.
You will also see a message in the Hotsync Log file about the conflict.
When a file appears in the Conflict section, it means that
the ThoughtManger conduit software was not able to synchronize your file. You
will need to reenter the changes you made to the outline.
When you change the title of an outline that has not been
synchronized, the name of the file also changes. For example, if you name an
outline “Shopping List”, the name of the file for that outline will
be called “ShoppingList.tmo”. Once an outline is synchronized, the
name of the outline no longer changes. Normally, you will not need to worry
about it, but if you are making a copy of an outline file, you should be aware
of this. To see the name of the file, expand the Outline List so that you can
see the File Name column.
The Handheld Outline and Handheld Templates section of the
Outline List show these outlines for one Palm user name. If you have
synchronizied multiple handheld devices with your desktop computer, you will
have many user names. Choose the current user by selecting the user name from
the User drop down menu in the toolbar.
If you have Microsoft Word 97 or above, you will be able
to import and export your outlines to Word. To export an outline, open it, and
choose Copy to MS Word from the File menu. Word will start, and the outline
will appear in Word.
Similarly, you can open an outline that was saved in Word
and import it into ThoughtManager by choosing Import MS Word Document from the
File menu. Note that the import command expects to open a Word document that is
in Word’s Outline mode. Some word documents that have extensive
formatting that is not part of Word’s Outline mode may produce unexpected
results.
Each outline can be saved as a separate file on your
computer. To save your outline in Palm database format (also known as a .PDB
file), choose Save as Palm OS outline from the File menu. Then choose which
folder on your computer will store the file.
The .PDB format is useful for sharing outlines with other
ThoughtManager users (e.g, by email or floppy disks). The .PDB file can be
installed by other ThoughtManager users, including those using ThoughtManager
only on Palm OS handheld devices. To install a .PDB file onto a Palm device,
start the Palm Install Tool and drag the .PDB file to it, and then synchronize.
To open a .pdb outline file, choose Import Palm OS .pdb
file from the File menu.
ThoughtManager is ideal for reference information. Because
it is hierarchical, you can quickly drill down to the information you need.
Examples include: dictionaries, encyclopedias, catalogs, field guides, travel
information, parts lists, web site lists, and more. You can even attach images
to the items to enhance the effectiveness of the reference.
For example, you may have a document in Microsoft Word
that contains headings and descriptions of product quality standards. You
choose Open MS Word Document from the File menu to create a new outline and then
edit the items to create your handheld reference. Or you may want to download
travel information and create a custom trip outline. Simply put the information
in Word or in a ThoughtManager outline and then hotsync.
A brainstorming session is more helpful when the ideas are
then organized, categorized, and prioritized. To use ThoughtManager for this,
jot down an idea for each item, then create categories under which the ideas
belong.
For example, for a brainstorm session on marketing strategies,
the categories that would emerge might be: Internet marketing, TV, Mailings,
Trade Shows, Magazines, etc. Underneath each of these would be other
sub-categories, and so on.
Plan your meetings in ThoughtManager, and then beam or
email the meeting agenda to the attendees. During the meeting, you can take
notes using the meeting agenda as a template. After the meeting, organize your
notes on the desktop, export them to Microsoft Word, and then format the notes
for report to management.
After the meeting, be sure to beam the notes to the
meeting attendees so they note what the action items are from the meeting.
Use ThoughtManager to create more complicated and
hierarchical lists than the simple lists that come with your handheld. For
example you may have tasks in different areas of your life: Work (which may
have many sub-headings as well), house projects, travel, hobbies, health, food,
volunteer work, movies to rent, raising the kids, web sites to remember, etc.
Keep track of a project by first listing the major tasks
of a project, then adding subordinate tasks to each major task to list the
steps required to complete that task. As a task is completed, check it off.
When all the subordinate tasks are checked, the parent task is automatically
checked.
Assign tasks to individuals by listing their name on the
task. You can then search for which tasks are assigned to that person using the
Find command.
Teachers can easily move around the classroom to assess
students while they are learning. For example, you can take a list of
educational standards that is in Word and open it up as an outline, which you
quickly turn into a checklist. You can create this list for each student and even
add special notes to various items. You can also keep track of the mountains of
homework data and other information. There are many different ways to create
student files and to use rubrics and checklists for individualized and
authentic assessments. Many examples of rubrics, checklists, and assessment
ideas are included in ThoughtManager for Teachers.
Teachers can create lesson plans and use ideas for
activities right there on the handheld. You can create your own lesson plan
templates (or use the ones provided). Wherever you are (e.g., boring faculty
meetings), you can develop lesson plans. You can refer to other resource
outlines in ThoughtManager for Teachers, such as Lesson Plan Creating, Lesson
Plan Template, Before Reading Activities, etc.
Teachers’ “To Do” lists are so long and
chaotic (& often lost) that things don’t get done and you get further
stressed by keeping it all in your heads. ThoughtManager eases the mental
burden by grouping ideas and tasks in logical ways. Examples include lists & priorities, parent contacts,
materials & supplies, curriculum and instruction ideas
Students can take notes and create outlines as they listen
learn. They can take notes on research materials or textbooks. They can use the
Research Paper Template and other outlines. They can even do homework tasks on
the handheld and easily upload the data to the desktop for formatting in Word.
ThoughtManager is perfect for creating test plans. As you
think about the product you are testing, you can continuously add ideas and
areas of the product you want to explore. Once all the portions of a product
are mapped out, you can save the outline as a template, and then create copies
of the outline for each type of test you want to perform (usability, stress,
automated testing, functional, unit, etc.). Keep track of which tests you have
completed by checking off the tested items.
The multi-level outline format is ideal for the complex
data organizing that is involved in many areas of medicine and patient care.
Medical professionals can create and share outlines to be used in patient
diagnosis, administering medicines, keeping updated on medical practices, etc.