Palm and Treo Hacks

Get More Out of MemoPad

Write text and you’re done—that’s what MemoPad is about, right? Well, yes, in the same sense that music is just vibrations in the air. These hacks let you go beyond MemoPad’s basic capabilities.

Because the standard applications have been fundamentally unchanged since the first Palm Pilot, they tend to be dismissed by power users. It is the standard applications’ apparent simplicity that makes these hacks even more powerful.

As with the other standard applications, this hack is divided into a series of sections. The first two apply equally well to MemoPad and to the attached notes that are available in the other standard applications.

Phone Lookup

If you select text corresponding to an entry (or the prefix of one of the entries) in the Address Book, you can choose Phone Lookup from the Options menu to replace the selected text with the corresponding text from the Address Book. The prefix is whatever appears at the start of the line in the Address Book List view. For example, a company would match the company name. If you only have a first name for someone, then it would match the first name. Otherwise, the match will be on either the last name (if you are viewing last names first) or the company name followed by a comma and the last name (if you are viewing company names first). If the text you have selected matches more than one entry, then the Address Book List view will appear to let you choose the contact you want. The text that comes back is the same text ...