Using envelopes to track tickets with your Filofax

Here is a trick I've been using for years. Yes, there are the transparent envelopes and yes, most Filofaxes have side pockets too, but I still used to find that tickets got lost or forgotten now and again. What I now do instead is punch an envelope and file it in the diary section between pages containing the relevant date. Using a tiny envelope (they come in packs of 50 from WH Smith) works really well:

The tickets are tucked inside. Depending on where you punch the holes you can access them without opening the rings, too:

Here's another method using a more conventional envelope. This one is a C6, too big to use in anything smaller than an A5 Filofax. But we're going to modify it. First, we'll cut off the end:

Another small cut to tidy the flap, and then we can punch it:

And here it is sitting in place in the diary:

You can also try this using one of those transparent CD envelopes, but I find they don't react too well to punching.

The joy of this method is that you can accommodate tickets of almost any conventional size and have them to hand precisely when you are going to need them.

Coming home

Tomorrow eveing I'll be flying home from Bermuda to the UK, so I'm getting my Filofax ready for the trip. All the flight details are noted, of course, and my baggage claim stickers will be in there once I get them at check in.

I've also got in my notes section details from TheTrainLine.com on the trains that will get me from Gatwick to Home by various routes depending on how long passport control, baggage claim and customs detain me (and when I say, 'detain' I'm hoping my choice of words will not come back to bite me.)

The Filofax will be in my hand baggage, of course, fully accessible during take-off and landing.

A5 business setup and tabs

I'm working in Bermuda this week and next, providing consultancy for an organisation here. That means my  A5 Kensington was dusted off last week and filled with my consulting tools and papers relevant to this client.

I'm particularly happy with the new tabs I made. These are plain 160 gsm card, cut down from A4 to 2 A5 pieces, punched with a tab added at the side. Each of those tabs starts off looking like this in MS PowerPoint:

Then I cut them out, apply glue, fold them over so the tab part sticks to itself and the large rectangles attach to the front and back of the cut card. When the glue is dry, I wrap a piece of adhesive plastic film around the whole thing and trim with a craft knife. Here's a closeup of the finished tab:

I like the way these tabs look. They make a great impression on the client too.

Make your own diary - source files

Last week I wrote about making your own diary layout if you couldn't find one commercially available that you liked. I also made available a PDF file of my 2012 layout.

Today, I am making available the source files so the more geeky of you can have a play. You'll need this excel file which does all the hard work. You can adapt this to give you any date range you want; simply change the dates in the first column. Have a look at the formulae, which mostly extract elements from the date and are relatively simple. Over towards the right, though, where dates are calculated for the mini calendars, there are some more complex formulae. Importantly, these columns must stay formatted as text, even though the data are numerical in nature; otherwise Word can't cope with them properly.

Speaking of Word, you can also grab the layout template I merged the data into to make my layout. You can adapt this to produce pretty much any layout you could imagine, then merge into a document you can print and punch. A couple of words of warning, though (pun semi-intentional). Firstly, depending on what version of word you're using, Word may put section breaks between every record, which will throw out the mirrored gutter formatting in the format. If it does, the solution is quite simple; do a find and replace on section breaks (^b) to remove them all. You'll also need to add a single page break to the front of the merged document so that a 2-day spread has gutters in the middle. Of course, this isn't an issue on 1-page layouts. You might also need to adjust the top and bottom margins until print preview confines the layout properly to single pages for your printer.

That's it really. If you want to roll your sleeves up you can create the perfect layout that is unique to your own needs. And you need never pay for a diary insert again. Switching mid-year? No problem. Your pages can start and end on any date you like.

Download and print your own A4 or A5 diary pages

Based on the diary layout I designed, this PDF file is a full 2-page-per-day diary for 2012. I'll make the source files available if there's demand so people can adapt the layout and set up for any period they like.

NB: This is in part a test of whether I can use Box.com to share files in this way. If it doesn't work, Steve has offerred to host for me at Philofaxy.

My perfect A4/A5 diary layout

When it comes to the larger organisers, the ones that sit on a desk, I tend to prefer page-per-day or even 2-pages-per-day, but none of the layouts available commercially works properly for me. So I made my own:

 
The hardest part was building the Excel file that serves as the data source for the Word mailmerge. Have a look closely at the top of the left hand page: yes, those mini-calendars are dynamic and will always show the current month plus next month. The formulae that feed all those numbers are non-trivial, but in another part of the collection of odd jobs I call a career, I'm an Excel developer, so it was an interesting challenge.

Print this on a duplex laser, punch it and you have an A4 diary. Mine is A5, so I print this in duplex booklet layout and then guillotine the sheets and voila: an A5 diary, the way I want it.

Once I get file hosting sorted out and playing with Blogger, perhaps I could publish the source files, or at least a PDF. Let me know in the comments if you're interested. Also, now the heavy lifting of the Excel file is all done, developing different custom layouts in Word should be pretty easy, so let me know in the comments if there's a layout you've always wanted. No promises, but I might be able to produce something that works for you.

My unique new today marker

When I made my new home made dividers I made a today marker using the same methods. Here it is: