Saturday, March 3, 2012

All My Journals: Review

I’ve been looking for a journaling software program for quite some time now. To me it seemed awkward to use some of the office software I have installed on my computer. These programs did not quite fit right as a journaling software. I just wanted  to be able to open and start writing my thoughts and notes for the day without going through any formatting or anything.

Then I came across All My Journals by Bad Wolf Software. I downloaded and installed the free trial version of the program and started using it. This is the one I needed. It’s simple,clean and is not overloaded with features I will never use anyway.

The free trial version is just as it says…a trial. It doesn’t include all the features available in the licensed version and just one journal is available. The licensed version is the full version with all the features unlocked and you can have an unlimited number of journals.

Some may think, well, I never keep a diary so what would I need something like this for anyway? There was a time I thought this way too. Then I became disabled and had to start making regular visits to my doctors. They would ask questions and I didn’t have all the answers I should have. I would not think about asking the questions I should be asking…until I’d get home again. That’s when I realized that I needed something I could keep a journal with.

Let’s think for a moment what you might use All My Journals for. As I mentioned earlier, I use mine for notes to my doctor that I write right away when there is something she or he should be aware of. I’ve also been using it to keep a diary. I don’t write in it every day, but when there is something significant to write about. Perhaps you might want to use it to keep agenda notes for an upcoming meeting. Or keep minutes for your meetings. Maybe keep a diary of your golf games, fishing or hunting trips. Ladies can write about their ladies groups, knitting, book clubs or whatever. The ideas are endless, I could keep going on with more ideas, but I think you get my point. It’s for everyone, men, women, children, students and businessmen and businesswomen. You will find many uses that will be unique to your needs.

When you open All My Journals, it will open to today’s date and the last used journal. Just start writing, or chose the journal you want and start writing. You can choose from a list of fonts in preferences and you have all the basic formatting tools available to you. To make it easy to read your journal there is a reader built into it. You can print your journal and specify the range you want printed. It includes a search feature making searching for a particular entry easy. The Save As and Export allow you to export your journal that can be read by any word processing software. Backup does just as it says by backing up your journal for data recovery should you journal become corrupted or lost.

The program will always give you the choice to choose the current year or the next couple of years. But that does not mean future years are not available. As the years pass, future years will always be shown. It is a perpetual calendar so you’ll be able to use this for many years to come.

Do you have a need to take it with you to use on another computer? All My Journals can be installed on a thumb drive with the data saved there also so you can take it with you to use wherever you are.

One more thing I’d like to mention about Bad Wolf Software is their tech support. I’ve rarely had to use tech support with any software I use. I read their blog and they said they were working on a new feature and an update would be soon released. I thought I’d take a chance and contact them to find out if indeed it was on track to be released as planned. I received an immediate reply that it was expected to be released the following month. To my surprise, shortly after, I received an e-mail that the new version had been released that day and they included a link to go to their site to download the updated version! I was impressed! All to often I read of complaints about tech support. In this case I’m happy to report that their tech support is responsive to their customers. I put a lot of value in that.

In conclusion, All My Journals is a simple program that will do what you want, no more, no less. I highly recommend it and encourage all my readers to check it out for yourself.

Happy Journaling,

-Ed