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If you haven’t noticed yet, Quick To-Do Pro has powerful filtering capabilities and a number of ways to apply various filters, which can be used separately or in conjunction with each other.

You can filter the task list:

• by project(s)
• by assignee(s)
• by due date either pre-defined (today, tomorrow, this week, etc.) or a custom date range
• by priority(-ies)
• by status (completed or not completed)

Here is how you can filter:

1) Using Filter menu:

2) Using toolbar buttons

3) Via duplicating menu in program’s Status bar:

4) Via Filter dialog, the most comprehensive way of filtering task list (press F7 or choose menu Filter >> Filter…):

You can also switch between showing or hiding completed tasks by pressing Ctrl+F5 or choosing menu Filter >> Show Completed Tasks

As Windows Vista is becoming more popular these days, I need to make sure that Quick To-Do Pro is fully compatible with it.

The bottom line is – Quick To-Do Pro works fine under Vista. All the functionality is there and it works. There are, however, few interface things that require fixing. The work is in the progress and version 4.6 is coming out shortly.

However, there are few things that Quick To-Do Pro users can do immediately. First of all, it’s the default toolbar text behaviour:

If you experience this problem, here is the solution:

Right-click the toolbar, choose Customize… and un-check “Small fonts in buttons captions” check box.

I like working with keyboard, sometimes it’s heaps faster than using mouse. That is why I put a great deal of thought into keyboard shortcuts when I was designing Quick To-Do Pro.

Almost every function of the program can be activated using a keyboard shortcut.

A comprehensive list of most important hot keys can be found in the help file (choose menu Help, then Getting Started and choose Hot keys section in the help file). However, not all keys are listed over there, some not-so-important ones are not documented. The easiest way of discovering shortcuts is to look at the menu, whether it’s a pop-up menu or a main program’s menu. If there is a shortcut for an operation, it’s listed next to a corresponding menu item. For example,

Program’s main menu:

or task list context menu (mouse right-click anywhere on a task list):

or task notes context menu (same one appears in diary as well):

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When Quick To-Do Pro is installed, it’s automatically configured for immediate work. This means it creates a sample database in the Application Data folder for the current Windows user and opens it. Full path of that location is C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR_USER_NAME_HERE\Application Data\Quick To-Do Pro
However, Quick To-Do Pro doesn’t require data files to be located at that location only, data files can be anywhere, on any disk, in any folder. So how do I move my task list to, say, My Documents folder, you may ask?
There are two ways of doing it.

1) By Backing up data and then restoring it.

Choose menu File >> Backup… and save the database to some temporary folder.
Then choose menu File >> New database and create a new database. Then choose menu File >> Restore data.. and select data files in the temporary folder to restore from. Done!

2) By physically moving files. First of all, take a notice where does the program keep your file. Check out program’s title bar:

My data files are located at X:\Documents and Settings\Alex\My Documents\Personal Data Store\Quick To-Do Pro.

Now exit the program via menu File >> Exit…, then open Windows Explorer and move the folder with all data files to a new location. Then start Quick To-Do Pro and choose menu File >> Open and browse for new location. Done site!

Quick To-Do Pro has a strong focus on to-do list management, however it’s not limited to be just a to-do list organizer. I’ve just got an email from one of the new users of Quick To-Do Pro, Gennady Palitsky from New York, with a very interesting suggestion. Gennady wrote:

I also wonder if it is possible to add a few features to the diary.
Except of a diary I use this feature as a capability to add generic notes. Right now they are linked to the calendar/date.
Just thought that I can accomplish it by creating a category/project ‘Notes’ with generic non-scheduled tasks (task name as a label, note itself as a task’s note).

Will work – probably may be added to the manual.

Instead of updating the manual on Gennady’s advise, I’ve decided to post a blog article first.

Thanks for your feedback, Gennady!

I’m glad to announce a new release of Quick To-Do Pro. Version 4.5 contains a major usability improvement – toolbar buttons with options to filter by Project, Assignee, Deadline and Priority:

Another good button is Autosize columns:

It’s not visible on the toolbar by default, however you can always put it onto the toolbar by choosing menu View >> Customize Toolbar…

The new version 4.5 also contains a number of little fixes which were reported as annoyances by users of version 4.4.1. Upgrade to the new version is free of charge for all users of version 4.0 and above. Download new version from Capstralia.Com download area and install over your existing version of Quick To-Do Pro. Site

It’s really important to keep a backup copy of important data. Task list is quite important, especially if you tend to forget things that are not in your task list (like me).

Quick To-Do Pro allows backing data up by using menu File >> Backup data…

This method works really well for making a backup to a flash drive, etc. However, if you want to automate your backups, it’s best to use special Backup software.

Likely, Windows comes with basic backup automation software that does the job. Click Start button, choose All Programs, then Accessories, then System Tools and run Backup utility.

Simply follow the prompts in order to set up a daily backup job. This way you will only loose one day worth of work in a worst case scenario. Not too bad comparing to a total loss of everything.

What to back up? You need to backup only files located in a folder which is shown in the title bar of Quick To-Do Pro (see screenshot):

In my case it’s X:\Documents and Settings\Alex\My Documents\Personal Data Store\Quick To-Do Pro

I’m happy to announce that Quick To-Do Pro 4.4 has just been released. There are quite a number of things that were improved. The main change is task list filtering – added filtering by priority and custom date range, re-organised program’s menu for usability and heaps of other improvements. Click here for the full list of changes.
What I’d like to concentrate on in this post is new calendar and filtering features. Check this screenshot out:

Moving mouse over the calendar will pop-up exactly the same hint as you would see in the system tray, but for the selected day.

Check out the status bar. It says that currently you’ve selected 6 tasks, you filtered your task list by All projects, All assignees, All due dates and All priorities.

As usual, new version 4.4 is free for all current users of Quick To-Do 4.0 and above.

Users of older versions (2.x and 3.x) can upgrade to version 4.4 for just 19.95
Download Quick To-Do Pro 4.4

Another frequent support question – what if I’ve bought a new computer and want to move my tasks to it?

It can be achieved by backing up data on your old machine (menu File >> Backup data) and then restoring it on your new computer by calling menu File >> Restore data…

Obviously, you need to download and install latest version of Quick To-Do Pro first.

I’m being asked from time to time about whether Quick To-Do Pro can display time in another format, because many people find US format MM/dd/yyyy quite unnatural.

The answer is – YES. Moreover, Quick To-Do Pro always uses format the user prefers (i.e. specified in system settings). Localised versions of Windows (German, Russian, etc) set date/time format common in the corresponding country during the installation process, however, English-speaking users from UK, Australia, New Zealand are being supplied with a stock-standard version of Windows, which is programmed around US market. Fair enough, US is the biggest English-speaking market and Microsoft has all the rights to do what they do and changing Regional Settings is pretty simple, but unfortunately, not all users are aware that they can change their system default Windows date format (US English) to their local format (Australian or British English in this case) with few mouse clicks.

Here is the instruction (I’m using Windows XP Professional in the example, however it applies to all versions of Windows, with slight variations in names of buttons):

1. Click Start button, Choose Control Panel and select Regional and Language Options.
2. Select your preferred language from Language drop-down

3. If you would like to customise your settings, press Customize… button and then change Short Date Format mask
Some hints for date format masks:

M/dd/yy – 9/21/06

M/dd/yyyy – 9/21/2006

MM/dd/yyyy – 09/21/2006

dd/MM/yyyy – 21/09/2006

dd/MMM/yyyy – 21/Oct/2006

dd/MMMM/yyyy – 21/October/2006

Please take a look at the screenshot of the settings dialog (click to enlarge)