The Leadtime field in an Appointment record lets you set the alarm to go off a specific number of minutes before the Start Time of the appointment. You can thus choose how far in advance of the appointment you'd like to be notified, allowing time to walk to a restaurant, take a taxi to the airport, etc.
The default leadtime is set to 5 minutes, which means that if you create an appointment for 2:25pm, the alarm will actually go off at 2:20pm.
To set the leadtime, open ApptBook, then press (F2) (Add) and fill in Description and Start Time fields. (See Screen 5.) Next, TAB down to the Leadtime field, or go there directly by pressing (Alt+L). Then type in the length of leadtime, either as minutes (for example, 90) or as hours:minutes (for example, 1:30).
Screen 5: An appointment with the leadtime set to 90 minutes.)
The leadtime can be set anywhere from 0 minutes to 23 hours and 59 minutes. However , in order to use a leadtime, the alarm has to be enabled. Pressing (Alt)+(B) toggles the alarm on or off.
The majority of my appointments are reminders to call people, so I've set the default leadtime to 0 minutes. To choose a new default, press (MENU) Options, Appointment Defaults. When the defaults window appears, TAB down to Leadtime and type in 0, or whatever number of minutes you'd like. (See Screen 6.)
Screen 6: By setting the leadtime default, you won't have to set individual lead-times in each new record.
When I create a 12:00pm business lunch appointment for some day in the future, I usually set the leadtime to three hours. That way, I'm reminded earlier enough (9am) to allow time for any last minute preparations I need to do, such as reading through an outline, or printing out a report.
Ralph C. Turner
Managing Editor, The HP Palmtop Paper
ralph_turner@thaddeus.com