Manual Menu

Getting Started

What is List Pad?

What is List Pad for?

What can List Pad do?

How is List Pad organized?

Where do I go from here?

This chapter gives a brief overview of List Pad, what it's for, what it can do, how it is organized, etc. It is recommended reading for all new users.

What is List Pad?

List Pad is a simple yet flexible list manager. It is designed to help you create, edit, organize, store, and retrieve simple day-to-day lists, such as to do lists, shopping lists, packing lists, goal lists, etc.

Each List Pad document is a separate list, like a separate piece of paper. You may have your shopping list on one piece of paper, and your to do list on another. Likewise, these would be separate List Pad documents.

What is List Pad for?

List Pad is perfect for the kinds of lists that you would normally "jot down" on a piece of paper or type out in a word processor. Lists like those mentioned above.

List Pad has many fields and powerful features designed for such lists. Things like alarms, price calculations, list totaling, categories, etc., give you plenty of flexibility for such lists without making List Pad hard to set up or use.

List Pad is not designed to replace a standard database for large collections of data like a store's inventory or a library's card catalog. Though a database is generally harder to set up and more complex than List Pad, a true database is a better place to store such "lists" because it is even more flexible and capable of dealing with very large data sets.

What can List Pad do?

List Pad can give you easy access to frequently used, day-to-day lists. List Pad can sort and filter such lists based on the categories and criteria you provide. List Pad can automatically compute the total cost of items in a list and then total the entire list. List Pad can also alert you regarding specific items with flexible alarms.

The following fields are available for each item in a List Pad list:

You can use one, several, or all of the fields in a list. For instance, your to do list may only make use of one text field and the date and time fields. A Christmas shopping list may make use of all of the fields.

List Pad also has over 30 user preferences that customize how List Pad works. Features like Auto Save, Auto Hide, Hot Activation, Special Files, Startup Files, etc. allow you to make List Pad work the way you want it to.

How is List Pad organized?

Every List Pad document is a separate list. When you open a List Pad document you see the List Browser, the window you use to view the list and to select items for editing or deletion. This window shows the items in table form, with sorting, filtering and list totaling.

You edit an individual item through the Item Editor, which is opened by selecting one or more items in the List Browser and clicking "Edit". This window has all of the fields available for the item in a tabbed view. Click the tabs to select different groups of fields and fill in the necessary information.

Each document has its own List Browser, and each document can only have one. But you can have multiple Item Editors open, one for each item, or you can use just one to navigate and edit your list.

Where do I go from here?

If you're an experienced Macintosh user who likes to just "dive in" to an application, you can simply launch List Pad and explore. Don't forget to look through the File Preferences, which is under the Edit menu. That is where you name the text fields and customize the "category" fields (the popup menus) for each List Pad document.

List Pad also has full balloon help which can be viewed normally or by using the Balloon View palette. You can open the Balloon View palette by selecting Balloon View (command-2) from the Window menu.

Should you run into any errors, you can view the error and read a short description about it in the Error Viewer. To open this window, select Show ErrorsÉ (command-4) from the Window menu.

If you prefer to go through a step-by-step tutorial, continue reading each chapter in this manual. Each chapter walks you through an aspect of List Pad, teaching you how to use the various features.