Dear LPG,

I read recently in a LPG news post about paper calendar power - the advantages of keeping a paper diary where the writer focused on the fact that electronic diaries don’t work really well when different members of a household are making appointments that more than one of the group need to keep, and that others may miss. 

I know that I am not the only person guilty of having a habit these days of agreeing to do things, writing them down and then forgetting to tell the others involved, but I want to talk about the other sort of diary. 

SP was talking about a diary that focusses on the future and helps you to know where you are supposed to be in advance, but I want to talk about the diary that reminds one of when they did things in the past. 

Have you ever needed to find out exactly when something happened?   It can be really hard to do.  How many times have you found yourself trying to work out the date that you bought something, because it has gone wrong and you need to check if it was over a year ago and past the statutory guarantee period, or if the six months have passed since you last went to the dentist?  If you are having a bit of an ongoing dispute with someone it is really good to be able to remember which date you made a telephone call or when you made a payment.  Or it may be that you have to find a particular detail on a contract.

If you are able to use a computer to keep a diary of what happens each day, the computer will be able to find words so simply for you and save you having to look through pages of information that have been written or typed on paper (if indeed you keep one of those).  

The secret is to press one of the ‘CTRL’ buttons and the ‘F’ button at the same time.  The result will be a box where you can put the word you are searching for (i.e. Dentist or payment) and the computer will find it for you (provided you have spelled it right).   The ‘CTRL’ and ‘F’ buttons work on the internet too and a lot of other programmes.  It is so quick

Even if you never need to find something, writing a few words about what happened every few days is a good way of having a reason to go to the computer.  if you are learning, practice is the secret of getting better and it is often the case that we don’t bother because we don’t really have a good reason to.  It is also a known fact that typing regularly can do your fingers the power of good when it comes to warding off arthritis.

It is one of those little computer facts that all your younger family members are bound to know about and, though there are other ways of finding things on a computer it is one of the most universal. 

RJ, Brockley Cross

LPG has found some information but it may be a little complicated to follow.  As RJ mentioned it may be a good idea to get one of your younger family members to show you how.  It is so simple when you know how both to keep a brief diary and to find key words when you need them.

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