What A Good Personal Information Management System Can Do For You

By Andy Zhang

The introduction of the desktop computer a number of years ago pushed the whole idea of personal information management into the space age. Suddenly it became extremely easy to file, manage and retrieve your private information. With the hectic lives we all lead nowadays, a personal information manager has become a vital part of our lives.

The heart of any PIM lies in its diary facility. This is where you will enter appointments, tasks and events. The most important requirement is probably that it should be easy to use. You simply don't want to spend hours trying to figure out how the software works. It should be intuitive. Entering, organizing and retrieving appointments and events should be quick and easy. The program should also offer the ability to view all your events for a single day, a week or a month on one screen.

Another important feature of every good PIM is the reminder facility. Once an event/appointment has been entered into the system, it should in some way or other be able to remind you of this before it actually occurs. Some PIMs have built-in email support, so it will remind you by sending an email before the time. Others use pop-up windows or alarms to remind you of an impending event/appointment.

A facility to import or export a calendar from or to another calendar system is also very nice. That means you can import an existing calendar from another software program if you decide to switch to a new one. When you find something better one day, you can also export data to a new program again.

Another very useful feature that most PIMs have is a task manager function. Often you will have various things that must be done within the next week or two, but not one of them should be done on a specific day. In this even you simply need a list of pending tasks - something which a task manager is perfect for.

Good personal information management software will also have the facility to enter recurring events. Without this facility, you won't be able to enter events that happen every week, month or year, such as regular meetings, birthdays et cetera. With recurring events you can enter all your friends' and colleagues' birthdays and forget about them - the system will warn you when a birthday is upcoming!

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About The Author
Andy Zhang writes about PIM Software Solutions for Efficient Software. Efficient's personal information management software is a leading solution for personal information management.