E-Z Contact Book can show advance notifications of birthdays and other events. These notifications will be periodically displayed in a popup window in the corner of your screen when the program is running:
To add a new birthday reminder, open the contact editor on the Reminders page, and:
Notice that new reminder has "Active" box checked. Birthday reminders will only show if they are set to "Active".
Birthday reminders will be displayed in the popup window starting from the advance number of days you chose, and for 5 days after the birthday (unless you turn it off).
There are three methods to add an event reminder:
Once you select one of these options, it will open the Reminder Editor window with the name of the event from your selection.
If you select "Other", you have to enter your own event name:
Non-birthday reminders work very similar to birthdays. But they have very important difference: you can set a non-birthday reminder either for a single event, or for a recurring event (repeatable with certain interval). To make the reminder recurring, check the box "Recurring". New tab "Recurrence" will appear in the editor:
Here you can select the frequency you want the reminders to show (Daily, Weekdays, Weekly, Monthly, Annually), when you want them to start, and (optionally) when to stop. If you specify the End date, this reminder will no longer show after that date.
Check box "Private" in the reminder section appears only if you use Sync. It is unchecked by default, which means this reminder will be synchronized with other connected computers. It may be useful if you want to share the reminders (along with other contacts data) with members of a group of people who use the program (a family, or coworkers). If you want to keep certain reminder just for yourself, check "Private" box, and it won't be shared.
Example of a non-birthday reminder in the Contact Editor:
You can add reminders for calendar events that are not associated with any contacts. You can do that in the Calendar view:
Here you can also edit or delete any reminders. Double-click on a selected reminder will open this reminder for editing. When you right-click on the reminder, you will see the options to Edit, Delete, and Send Email (if applicable).
The reminder window will pop up for a few seconds with an interval of several minutes (10 min by default). This interval, duraction, color of the popup, and display location can be adjusted in the main menu > Settings > Preferences > Reminders.
To check today's reminders at any time without waiting for the window to pop up, click View > Show Today's Reminders in the main menu. The same option is available in the context menu of program icon in the notification area (system tray).
If you want to keep the reminder popup from hiding, just move your mouse cursor over the popup window while it is open, and it will stay for as long as you keep the cursor here, allowing you more time to read the text.
You may want to stop displaying some of the reminders or all of them, temporarily or permanently. To do that, click on the popup window. This will open the following "Reset Reminders" window:
Here you can either edit a contact (click on the contact name), or edit reminder (click on the event name)
If you don't want to be distracted with popup reminders, you have two options to mute them:
If you restart the program, Mute mode will be reset, and reminders will pop up normally.
You can deactivate individual reminders by checking corresponding Don't show until next time (recurring reminders) checkbox or Don't show anymore (deactivate) (non-recurring reminder) checkbox.
When you deactivate a birthday reminder, it won't be shown again until next year. And you don't have to reactivate birthday reminders again the next year - they will be reactivated automatically by the program after a certain period of time.
When you deactivate a recurring reminder, it will be automatically reactivated after its display period.
Important: E-Z Contact Book must be active for reminders to show at scheduled times. If you exit the program, reminders will not be shown.
To keep the program active, but running in the background, even if you close the main window, open Settings > Preferences > General, and make sure that one of two options "Keep program active..." is checked.
If you want to rely on reminders, it is also recommended to start the program automatically when Windows starts. To do that, open Settings > Preferences > General and make sure the box "Start E-Z Contact Book when I start Windows" is checked. When this option is enabled, the program starts in the minimized state (you can see the program icon in the Windows task bar).
