Upgrading from MultiTimer 2.x; Oh, Brave New World...
Welcome, MultiTimer 2.x users! The big news about the transition from MultiTimer 2.x to MultiTimer Pro is that MultiTimer Pro is a much, much more capable and sophisticated program. I think you’ll be delighted with the powerful new features. To become fully familiar with MultiTimer Pro, you’ll want to read through the rest of this manual. In this chapter I’ll describe some aspects of the program whose behavior or appearance has changed, and also explain some points about using your old MultiTimer log files with MultiTimer Pro.
 
Updating Your MultiTimer 2.x Log Files:
To use your old MultiTimer 2.x log files with MultiTimer Pro, drag the “MultiTimer Logs” folder and the “MultiTimer Data” file into the MultiTimer Pro folder, and then launch MultiTimer Pro. MultiTimer Pro will convert the old log files to the new MultiTimer Pro log format. It won’t alter the original MultiTimer 2.x log files or data file, but will make copies of the logs in the new format. The converted modules will appear in the MultiTimer Pro modules list with “(MT2)” appended to their names. The name of the “MultiTimer Logs” folder will be changed to “Old MultiTimer Files”, and the old MultiTimer Data file will be moved to this folder. (MultiTimer Pro no longer requires a “MultiTimer Data” file; all the information about a module is contained in the log file.)
If you have any “inactive” MultiTimer 2.x log files that are no longer included in your MultiTimer 2.x popup menu of modules, these will have to be converted separately. To do this, first gather all the inactive log files you want to convert into a new folder. Name this folder “MultiTimer Logs”, and put it in the MultiTimer Pro folder, and then launch MultiTimer Pro again. You should include only inactive MultiTimer 2.x log files in the folder for this conversion pass, and do not include a “MultiTimer Data” file when you are converting inactive MultiTimer 2.x log files.
One of the differences between MultiTimer Pro and MultiTimer 2.x is that with MultiTimer 2.x you could “manually” alter the total time for a day, week, month, etc. This sometimes caused confusion, since the arithmetic total of session times wouldn’t necessarily agree with the total shown for a day, for example. With MultiTimer Pro, you can no longer directly alter the total time for time periods other than a session. However, you can now alter the session totals shown in log files, and you can create new sessions (with any starting date and time). This means that you still have the capability to “retroactively” change your total times for a day, week, etc. but now the total for a day, etc., will always agree with the total of the sessions that occurred in that day. Furthermore, when you manually adjust the time of a session in MultiTimer Pro, you can see that adjustment in the log file.
This difference between the two MultiTimers has implications when you convert old MultiTimer 2.x log files to MultiTimer Pro log files. If MultiTimer Pro sees that the arithmetic total time of sessions that occurred in (for example) a day don’t agree with the displayed total time for that day, it will create a new session for that day and set its “adjustment” time to make up the difference. This will make the totals agree. The same is done for totals for a week, month, etc.
Another cause for apparent differences between your old MultiTimer 2.x logs and the MultiTimer Pro logs they are converted into is this: MultiTimer 2.x would save the times of sessions as a number of seconds (though it only displayed minutes and hours). As session times were added together to make totals for days, weeks, etc., these “left over” seconds would accumulate and result in the total for a day (for example) being a minute or two greater than the apparent total of the sessions in that day. MultiTimer Pro rounds off the seconds of each session, so this discrepancy doesn’t occur. When converting logs, MultiTimer Pro will correct the discrepancy by adding occasional session records with adjustment times of a minute or two.
Note that if you had an Auto-Open file selected in a MultiTimer 2.x module, you’ll have to reselect it in the converted MultiTimer Pro module.
Log-keeping was optional in MultiTimer 2.x, and you could turn it on or off for any module at any time. As with manual adjustments, this could cause confusion, since it could result in un-logged sessions whose total would still be added to the total time for a day, week, etc. In MultiTimer Pro, log-keeping is always on, so every session is logged.
MultiTimer 2.x logs displayed the most recent sessions at the top of the log window. MultiTimer Pro uses the more conventional approach of adding the most recent sessions to the bottom of the window.
There are, of course, many other differences between MultiTimer 2.x and MultiTimer Pro. The points covered in this chapter are ones that you should be particularly aware of as you make the transition.
