Philofaxy

13 December 2019

Free For All Friday No 579 by Laurie

I love printable planner pages so much, especially when they are free (like the Philofaxy printable diary pages)! I've been experimenting with planners for more than a decade, and I hate that wait between ordering a planner and receiving it days or, depending on where I was living and where the planner was shipped from, weeks later. Even worse was when I received it after a long and excited wait to discover much to my disappointment that the planner would not work for me, for whatever reason.

Printable planner pages are a great way for me to experiment with different layouts without the wait and expense of ordering planners.

I've been using the Philofaxy month per page horizontal format printables for a couple of years now for blog post planning. I print them single-sided so I can use the facing page (which is the back of the previous month's page) to write post ideas and goals for the month, then use the dated daily lines to write the blog post title. I also note recurring topics or themes on the specific days so I don't forget. This has been a great way for me to keep track and plan ahead for blog posts.

Today I downloaded next year's pages from Philofaxy, printed them out, punched the holes and popped them into my Filofax, all in just a few minutes. So convenient!

Thank you to Steve and Ray for continuing to make these free printable planner inserts available to us year after year!

And as always on Fridays, feel free to discuss anything ring binder organizer related!

12 December 2019

The Golden Rules of How to Use the Philofaxy Diary Inserts

There are some simple basic rules to using the Philofaxy diary inserts. Follow the rules and you should be able to produce your own inserts successfully.

If in doubt or if you are still having issues then contact Steve by email steve at philofaxy dot com.

1. Make sure you have downloaded the correct files. We offer 'pre-merged' versions in Word and PDF versions.

The Word ones tend to be less trouble to print than the PDF files. The 'Pre-Merged' versions are the ones that are ready to print, fresh out of the box, you can modify them, but you will have a lot of work to do!.

Also read the notes on printing below, which apply to pre-merged and modified files.

2. If you want to modify one of our inserts, may be to add some colour, or to change the fonts (within reason) then you need to download the source files, this is a Word File and an Excel file. The Word file will only be 1, 2, or 4 pages in length. (hint!) The Excel file contains all the date information.

There aren't different Excel files for different years, you just change the date in Cell A2 and save the file and then you will have a file to create a new 12 months worth of inserts.

So you can do any 12 month span from this file. We are traditional in doing Jan-December, but if you wanted to do an Academic Year then just set the start date in the Excel file (Cell A2) to your term start date.

3. After doing your mail merge on a modified source file there are a couple of things you need to do on the new file it creates.

Firstly you need to remove the section breaks from the whole file. To do this the easy/quick way. Do a Find and Replace, in Edit, select Find, Replace. Set Find to ^B (Section Break) and leave the replace blank. It should report finding the number of section breaks depending on the type of insert. 52 in the case of a Week per View insert.
In the case of a 'Per View' e.g. Week per View (Week on two pages) Month per view, type insert, you need to insert a blank page at the start of the file. So put your cursor at the start of the file and 'Insert' 'Page Break'

You need to remove the section breaks so that the page margins are correct as they are 'mirrored' margins so the pages will appear to go 'left, right, left' as you scroll down through the file. This is to allow for the binding/ring margin.

The extra blank page is required to make sure that the pages when printed are 'in sync', without that page the first page of your Week per View would be on one side of the paper, and the second page on the reverse side of the same sheet, not very easy to use.

4. If your modifications didn't work out, just go back to your source file make some modifications and try again. Limit printing to say the first 4 or 8 pages, so you don't waste paper.

5. When printing your files always print in 'Normal' order ie page 1 first, not in Reverse or Collated order. The actual terminology will vary depending on the make/model of your printer and the way in which the sheets are printed, so it is not possible to give any concrete information on what to look for.

Do a test print and note which page gets printed first, if it is page 1, then page 2 etc you are in business. Printing in the reverse order will often end up with your pages out of sync (not facing each other correctly)

6. You must not use our files in their downloaded state or modified state for commercial reasons, so please do not sell them. Share them for free of course, but please do not try to profit from our hard work.

Those are the main rules, but there are several other things that pop up frequently that I will address here. In no particular order.

Q1. Why don't the files include Week Numbers?

A1. There are three standards for Week Numbering used in the World. USA uses one standard that isn't the ISO standard for Week Numbering that the majority of the world uses. Given that Microsoft is in the USA, therefore you have to 'break' Excel with macros to get it to produce Week Numbers to the ISO standard!!

Also we wanted to make our files available to as wide an audience as possible without there being any issues of differences in location.

Q2. Why do you use Monday to start the week and not Sunday?

A2. Again this varies depending on your location. The ISO standard for Weeks sets Monday as the start of the week, and the USA, Canada and Japan don't follow the ISO standard.

That said you are welcome to modify our files to do Sunday start if you really can't live with Monday start. Some examples have been shared previously. See here and for monthly here.

Q3. 'I can't get A4 paper where I live, where can I get it from?'

A3. Take a look on Amazon USA it is available outside of Europe and the rest of the world that uses ISO page sizes.

Q4. 'All of your files are A4 not A5?'

A4. Yes that is correct they have to be if you are going to use the booklet printing facility on some printers.

If you are going to print straight on to A5 paper, then scale to fit A5 or by a percentage of 71%

Q5. 'My pages aren't printing correctly, can you please check the file'

A5. Make sure you are printing the file from page 1 not the last page. It is possible we have forgotten to add a blank page to the front of the file, we are human after all!

Q6. 'The margins are coming out all wrong when I print your files'

A6. Make sure you are printing on the correct size of paper for the file A4, A5 or Letter size paper. A4 is not the same as Letter Size paper.

If you have created your own file from our source files, make sure you have removed the section breaks as mentioned in Golden Rule 3 above.

Q7. "Will you do me an insert with x days and y days missing, etc etc?"

A7. We get a few odd requests. Weeks without weekends (Work Week), Weeks that start on a Thursday and bigger space for certain days and not others. You name it, we have been asked it over the last few years.

If I'm not busy then I will often create a set of files for you from one of our existing files if it isn't too much of a time suck. But I will often point people in the direction of trying to do the edit themselves so they have full control over the final product. As long as they realise they can't sell it. (see 6 above).

Of course if you get stuck I am happy to help.

Q8. 'Can you help me with x on y insert?'

A8. Yes of course I've even done things remote on peoples PC's whilst talking to them on Skype, because obviously I can't see what has come out of the printer! But again subject to time allowing we can try to solve any issue.

I hope this post helps you use our inserts. Learning how to use our files and making your own version and getting them printed can be a steep learning curve, but one worth doing if you want to have an insert that is perfect for you that isn't going to go out of stock, or be discontinued.

11 December 2019

Video Web Finds - Wednesday 11 December 2019

So I hope you have had a good weekend.

So now it is time to enjoy a great collection of videos from around the internet.

Here are a selection of the latest Filofax videos for your enjoyment.

For tips on how to improve your videos, please see this post. Also this video too Webfinds
Your Filofax/Organiser Videos could appear in this list, just contact philofaxy at gmail dot com to be added to our monitoring list.

You might also be interested in Planner Spread Love on Facebook.

Enjoy

10 December 2019

Free For All Tuesday - No 462

So what questions or discussion points have you got for us today?

It doesn't matter if you are a beginner or a more experienced user of organisers, we want to hear your thoughts, questions, opinions etc.

We are here to answer your questions.

Make today the one day you post a comment or a question.

It is Tuesday after all so fire away with any questions and comments.

09 December 2019

Guest post: 1786 reindeer skin vintage de Villiers - by Harry from Bucklehurst Leather

Thank you, Harry, for this guest post about his de Villiers vintage 1786 reindeer skin super rare binder. Thanks to Monika for sharing the Instagram post in the Facebook group as well.

We also have some other posts about the de Villiers brand:
https://philofaxy.blogspot.com/2014/06/de-villiers-slimline-organiser.html
https://philofaxy.blogspot.com/2014/07/guest-post-de-villiers-on-its-travels.html
https://philofaxy.blogspot.com/2018/10/silent-sunday_28.html
https://philofaxy.blogspot.com/2018/06/silent-sunday_10.html
https://philofaxy.blogspot.com/2014/07/reboot-your-filofax.html

I have recently acquired a rather interesting organiser and Anita suggested I might like to share some details. I am not a collector, but a leather worker, however when I saw this one for sale I could not resist it, even though it was expensive!

What drew me to it was the Russian hatch grain leather covering, as this came from the wreck of a ship called the Metta Catharina, that sunk in a fierce storm off Plymouth Sound (UK) in 1786.The actual recipe for tanning Russian hatch grain leather seems to have been lost with the Russian Revolution, however the discovery of this ship off Plymouth Sound in 1973 rekindled interest in this leather, as the ships hold had rolls of the leather, and much of it was still perfectly usable, despite having been under the sea for over 200 years.

Russian hatch was treated using birch oil which is a great preservative, and that combined with the leather being in tight rolls helped to keep it from rotting away. The Duchy of Cornwall gave permission for the leather to be raised from the wreck and sold, and over the years it has been used for a wide variety of special projects. It is now extremely rare, and London shoemaker George Cleverly still has a small supply as they offer wallets, watch straps and key rings made from the last of this leather.

As well as the organiser, I have about 20 postage stamp pieces of this original leather, and it's fascinating looking at the hand rollered hatching on the different samples, that are all similar but different, as the leather is believed to have been made by various village communities across Russia.

My binder is stamped inside "de Villiers" and "Made in England", and I understand de Villiers used to have a small shop in Villiers Street alongside Charing Cross station in London. I have been told this model was a top item when sold with a retail price of $895. I have not been able to corroborate this, and I hope that some of the members here may be able to add more detail.

This organiser measures approximately 235mm x 200mm when closed. It has six black Krause 3 cm rings, 10 card pockets and two full length pockets and a flap on the inner left hand, and a flap and an expanding pocket with pen holder on the right hand side. The rings are compatible with Filofax A5 ring configuration and inserts, and I am using it for my leather belt making records.

I have a watch strap that I've made from this leather and I posted a film on YouTube, my channel name is Harry Rogers. I do also sell lovely vegetable tanned leather belts and my website is Bucklehurst Leather. There have been attempts to recreate this lovely leather, and after considerable research and experimentation the F J and J Baker Tannery in Devon have managed to make a very good version, that I use to make compact wallets.

I do hope that sharing some of these details is of interest to some of you, and I would naturally be delighted if anyone can add any information about this binder and de Villiers.

08 December 2019

Silent Sunday

A selection of Van der Spek Leather Samples.

07 December 2019

Web Finds - Saturday 7 December 2019

So I hope you have had a good week

So now it is time to enjoy a few blog posts from around the internet, so grab a drink and make yourself comfortable for our weekly round-up.

Here are some Philofaxy posts you might have missed this week:

So here are the latest Filofax and other brand blog posts from around the Internet. Don't forget to leave a comment on the posts you enjoyed reading, all bloggers enjoy getting comments.

We monitor over 400 blogs and sites, your Filofax/Organiser blog posts could appear in this list, just contact philofaxy at gmail dot com to be added to our monitoring list.
We can not guarantee people will read your posts, but we know there is a higher chance of people reading your posts and returning to read other posts if you make them interesting with pictures and good hints and tips. Do not forget to give your posts a title...
Your Filofax/Organiser posts could appear in this list, just contact philofaxy at gmail dot com to be added to our monitoring list.
For some general tips on Filofax Blogging, please see this post
Consider joining our Facebook group - Filofax for Philofaxy fans

And have you tried reading one of my Flipboard magazines yet? It works great on a tablet or smart phone, but you can view them on a desktop machine as well. Be sure to Follow the ones you like and you will get notifications when I update them.

View my Flipboard Magazine. View my Flipboard Magazine. View my Flipboard Magazine. View my Flipboard Magazine.
View my Flipboard Magazine. View my Flipboard Magazine. View my Flipboard Magazine. View my Flipboard Magazine.
Enjoy

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