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Organizers are designed for a variety of uses and are known by many other names - schedulers, calendars, "to do" lists, notepads, address books, contact managers, personal information assistants (PIM), task managers, time managers, document managers, and others. Some organizers perform only one of the above functions while others perform all of them.
Generally, an organizer is a software program designed to catalog a variety of useful information and make it easy to retrieve the information when it is needed.
Perhaps the two most widely used features of organizer software is for managing appointments and tasks and for maintaining addresses and phone numbers.
Information stored in an organizer can be easily accessed using a "search" feature where you tell the computer what information you are looking for and the program quickly finds the information and places it on the screen. Information stored in different sections of the organizer can be easily cross referenced. For example, if you enter the search request "John Doe," the computer reminds you of your appointment with Mr. Doe (from the appointment calendar section), brings up John's address (from the address book section), dials the phone number, if you wish (from the address book section), keeps the John Doe information on the screen so you can make notes as you talk (from the contact management section), shows you notes from your last meeting with Mr. Doe (from the contact management section), and allows you to review letters and faxes you sent to John Doe (from the document management section). In addition to all of this, the project management section of your organizer would display the progress your "team" is making on the Doe account project, and your "to do" list reminds you what your next task is for this project!
Organizers make it convenient for you to manage a lot of little pieces of information. Most organizers will alert you if you have a scheduling conflict, allow you to change your appointment by simply using the mouse to "drag" the appointment to another day or time, print your daily (or weekly or monthly) list of appointments, and even sound an alarm in advance to remind you of your appointment.
Some examples of organizer software are Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Organizer, Act! and Goldmine.
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