We present a page of information and downloads dedicated to Lotus Agenda, the venerable DOS information manager.

We were recently asked (April 2009) if we ourselves still use Agenda. The answer is a resounding "yes." We still use Agenda every single day in our working life, because we've simply never found anything better to efficiently and effectively help us do what we need to get done.

The new Agenda WikiWiki Forum is here. We have ported over the posts from the old forum so there's a lot to read.

Here are some files and notes for Lotus Agenda. While Agenda material isn't quite so easy to locate, we've gotten together this modest collection, and supplemented it with some of our own applications. If you have something you're willing to share, send it as an e-mail attachment, with a description of some sort, to

agenda@bobnewell.net

and it will appear here in due course. If you find any broken links, please let us know directly.

Pre-installed version of Agenda 2.0b:

If you have trouble with the official release, which requires creating 720k diskettes, you can try our pre-installed self-extracting version; get it here.

You must extract this at the root of your C drive to create the c:\agenda directory. Nothing else will work!

This pre-installed version is set up with a few representative printers and screen displays. This has worked out for a number of people; please let us know how you fare. Post a comment in the forum or write to agenda@bobnewell.net .

Agenda Mailing List:

Lively, if intermittent, discussion takes place on the the Agenda mailing list. For more information, to read previous postings, or to join up, visit

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pimlist/ .

You need to be a Yahoo member to join but that doesn't seem like a big deal.

Web-Based Agenda Effort

Sonjaya Tandon, one of the original Agenda developers, has started planning for a Web-based Agenda-like application which he calls "Agenda Redux." (Note: as of April 2009, and probably much before, the project appears to be dead.)

Files and applications by others:

• Agenda Courses Tutorial presentations on Lotus Agenda, suitable for classroom use, by Phil Robinson.
• Recipe database provided by Wallace Audley and written by Katherine Fritz.
• Some legal applications originally from the Lotus FTP site.
• Personal Efficiency Planner, a souped up version of the Planner application. See the IBT website for more info and installation instructions.
• First Things First, based on Steven Covey's book, written by David Mc_Court, on Michael Stocker's web page.
• President's Planner, a very advanced PIM add-on on, from Alex Todd, once again available from our web site.
• President's Planner documentation in PDF format (hosted locally, thanks to a helpful correspondent).
• Partner's Planner takes President's Planner into the world of practice management. Also from Alex Todd, and again now available from our website.
• Supermacros is another Alex Todd product and finally reconstructed for download. Quick-add of names, companies, and projects, and the unique "Point and View" utility.
• Partner's Planner documentation in PDF format, once again available from our web site.
• Preinstalled Agenda and President's Planner Combo; we haven't tested this but it's surely worth a try.
• Agenda Tutorial, supplied and created by Dez Ellis. Written for a specific industrial application, this is a very nice Agenda tutorial, containing some highly instructive and useful macro examples.
• Agenda HTML Help, contributed by Michael Rourke. Michael has extracted all of the (extensive) Agenda help and organized it into an HTML file. Keep this open in your browser while you work. Or, if you are like me and don't have a full set of manuals, you can print this out and have a hard-copy manual that is quite serviceable.
• Agenda Tech Notes in Agenda database format, assembled and developed by Steven Hawkins.
• Beyond 2.0, the classic extension to Agenda for printing, calendars, and much more, in a preinstalled version thanks to Tony Kan. See the README file for installation instructions. No documentation; experiment. If you have documentation, please share!
• Revised Agenda FAQ, in Agenda database format, assembled by Tony Kan. An updated 2006 version of Agenda FAQs with corrected links and new material.

Files and applications of our own devising:

• Small Macro Package, v1.0, containing sample macros to switch databases, run external DOS programs from a menu, and capture the output of external DOS programs into a new item.
• Simple checkbook register/balancer, v1.0. We don't use this one but plan to "get around to it."
• Bill payment reminder, v1.0; we use this to be sure we don't pay bills late (or early).
• Daf Yomi Calculator, v1.0 is perhaps of direct interest only to Jewish scholars, but is an example of how Agenda macros can do unexpectedly complex things.
• Pinball Scoring application, v1.10; can be used for video pinball, card games, etc. Individual game and Challenge mode is supported. Perhaps this has a "serious" use as well, but we certainly didn't plan it that way! (Release 1.10 cleans up the Challenge Mode code and has other minor improvements.)
• Transcendental Functions for Agenda, v1.01 (seriously). Includes square root, sine, cosine, tangent, secant, cosecant, cotangent, ln, exp, and x to the y. Can easily be extended if you wish.
• Bicycle Ride Log, v1.01, for keeping track of just about every aspect of your bike rides. Includes a gearing calculator and a (probably inaccurate) spoke length calculator.
• Learn By Agenda, v1.0, a usable proof of concept text mode learning system based on spaced interval recall techniques. Includes a (very) small sample Hawaiian vocabulary tutor.
• BG Log, v1.0, a very simple logbook for blood glucose levels, food intake, and exercise tracking.
• RPN Calculator, v1.0, really a prototype, sure to be expanded in the future. Comments needed!
• Copy from Clipboard, v1.0, a less-wealthy cousin of the "Zooter" to allow relatively quick creation of new items and note text from the contents of the Windoze clipboard. Tested only with Windoze 98, and so a bit obsolete.
• Stardate Calculator 1.0 as in Star Trek. Very useful!

To use these, download and then unzip into either your AGENDA\APPS directory, or a directory as specified in an enclosed "readme" file.

We don't announce bug fix or feature updates; watch the version number listed next to the title.

Tips and techniques:

Ron Stern has provided a number of files from the old Compuserve Agenda Forum.

• Performance optimization tips from the Agenda 2.0 development team.
• Database damage and the checker utility, from the dev team.
• Q and A with the Lotus dev team, a long and rambling document.
• Tips for keeping Agenda running trouble free, attributed to Alex Todd and others.
• Capture log of Agenda conference held on-line on Compuserve, 23 October 1990.
• Second Agenda conference, 30 January 1991.
• Agenda 2.0 Memory Management and Performance issues, unattributed but likely by Lotus staff.
• Agenda 2.0 Hot Topics, likely by Lotus staff.
• Agenda Frequently Asked Questions 1, rather terse, likely from Lotus.
• Agenda Frequently Asked Questions 2, repeats and extends FAQ 1.
• Anyitems Macro Description, a macro to detect empty categories, but the macro isn't included. By Stephen Yeo.
• May 1992 Atlantic Monthly article draft, by Jim Fallows. A good article and, we gather, a famous one.
• Damaged Agenda 2.0 File Recovery, more on this important topic. Unattributed.
• Hype(rbole), Hysteria, Hypocrisy, and Agenda, by noted Agenda writer R.H. Flast.
• The Hamner Nag System which causes certain items to roll-over from day to day on your to-do list. Very useful. By Judy Hamner.
• President's Planner Review by Charles Olsen. Very good review of this important add-in.
• Saving Recurring Items in case of database damage, by Paul Maloney.
• Getting Things Done, an implementation of Allen's system using Agenda and President's Planner, by Charles Bradley.
• PIMs Compared, a rambling article of our own that looks at an eclectic group of PIMs including Agenda.

On-line Agenda Reference as contributed by Michael Rourke (can also be downloaded, see above).

Links:

There is an unannotated directory containing numerous Agenda files at http://home.neo.rr.com/pim/ although some of the links are bad. In particular, all references to "palmtop.net" should be changed to "hp200lx.net".

Bob Newell, Santa Fe, New Mexico: Last updated on 17 June 2006.