Filofax Inserts (Reproduced)

Thank you to Kevin for sharing these reproductions of older no longer available Filofax Inserts, mainly from the late 1980's and the early 1990's 

They are available to print on A4 or US Letter size paper in Personal and Pocket Filofax Sizes. 

ISO Paper Size.

1. Filofax 1987 Personal 
2. Filofax Pocket 6-ring 1987-style 31 line
3. Filofax Pocket 6-ring 1987-style
4. Filofax PocketA 4-ring 1987-style
5. Filofax PocketA 6-ring 1987-style

 US Letter Size.

1. Filofax 1987 Personal 
2. Filofax Pocket 6-ring 1987-style 31 line
3. Filofax Pocket 6-ring 1987-style
4. Filofax PocketA 4-ring 1987-style
5. Filofax PocketA 6-ring 1987-style

Please note that these files contain around about 180 different insert designs, some are single, double or triple fold. There are also some quad fold inserts to be printed on A3/Tabloid paper for the required width.

As you will see when you open any of the files the first ones look quite 'ordinary' and the more interesting ones are much further down in the files, this is because of the way the original designs were numbered.  

These inserts are also linked from this page. 

There will occasionally be updates to the files. 

Any issues with any of the above links please email steve at philofaxy dot com 

Historic Inserts

It is many years since I have been collecting and scanning in old Filofax/Lefax catalogues. It started with the 1937 catalogue that my late father in law gave me in the early 1990's 

It went missing for a number of years, then I got involved in Philofaxy in 2009 and I was wanting to find it again!! Then in 2010 when we moved house to France, the catalogue was found inside one of our books! 

Since then the 'collection' of catalogues has grown, helped by many readers donating catalogues or sharing scans of catalogues. Back in about 2015 Filofax UK lent me their own catalogue archive for about 6 months. Although our collection far exceeds theirs now! 

When I've had catalogues donated to me from various readers around the world, I have often also been sent a lot of old (pre 1990) inserts. 

It is therefore time to start scanning those in to build up as comprehensive archive as possible of all of the tens/hundreds of old designs. 

They are very diverse in their subject matter from Film Exposure Record to Oil Well Record, to Minister's Monthly Record etc etc! 

It isn't going to be '5 minute job' but I'm sure with your help, we can fill in as many of the 'gaps' as possible. 

I will announce when the new page has been launched and I will include how you can submit any images of historic inserts you might have. 

Thank you. 

Insert Exchange

Back in the eighties, well before we had easy access to the internet and social media, Filofax users would exchange inserts. It wasn't a weekly occurrence, but I can remember exchanging one or two inserts whenever I came across a fellow Filofax user.  

There's no reason why we shouldn't do insert exchange in this modern era. Keep it simple, just a simple exchange. Pop the inserts in an envelope and post them as a 'letter'. Keeping the envelope thin keeps the cost of posting down and you won't have to do a customs declaration, because it is classed as letter. 

You might want to just 'exchange' coloured lined paper, there might be some colour(s) that you might never use and you want some pages in a colour that you use more than others. 

Or you might be changing size, so you have some A5 inserts that you are willing to 'exchange' for say personal size. 

It can apply to diary inserts as well and we aren't just covering Filofax inserts, any brand can be exchanged as long as the person 'receiving' knows what they are getting that will be fine. 

If this is a popular idea I will add a section to the Ad-Spot page for 'Insert Exchange' 

Please comment below if you like this idea. 

Reading

Reading books be they non-fiction or fiction is one of life's pleasures. It gets me away from a computer or TV screen, away from distractions and notifications.

I'm not a fast or as fast a reader as some people. I often get so absorbed in a book or a series of books I forget the title of the book I'm reading. 

To take the strain out of know what books I've read or haven't read yet I created a few different Filofax inserts which I hope you find useful too.

Yes I know there are websites and apps for this sort of thing, but a Filofax insert removes the privacy and data sharing concerns.

A4/A5 size inserts:

• Book Review - .doc .pdf 
• A5 Reading List - .doc .pdf
• A4 Reading List - .doc .pdf

Personal size inserts:

• Book Review - .doc .pdf
• Reading List - .doc .pdf

Personal size on A4 plain paper:

• Reading Log .docx .pdf

Personal size pages on pre-punched A4 paper:

• Book Review
• Book Review + Notes
• Reading List

Please note these should also work on plain paper and then cut and punch to size. 

What books are you reading at the moment? 

Film Photography Recording Insert

As some of you might know I've been a keen amateur photographer for a number of years... decades even! For nearly 20 years now I've been using digital photography as my main method of capturing images. Prior to that and since being a teenager I have used film for all my photography.

Over the years I've owned a number of different film cameras, I still own a few of them from a Kodak Instamatic 25 camera to a more recent Canon EOS 30 Single Lens Reflex (SLR) film camera.

My use of film has dropped dramatically over time, but I have maintained an interest in it on an occasional basis. I've recently gone back to shooting a few rolls of film each year. 

Like a lot of other analogue things (planners included!) there has been a resurgence in people wanting to go back to using film photography, in the same way that there has been an increase in the number of LP vinyl records sold in the last few years.

I decided that this year I should do some more film photography. It is quite a challenge after using digital photography with the benefits of instantly being able to see your results. It has also become quite expensive as well in recent years, not only the cost of the film but getting it processed as well. 

To help with my understanding of the results of the pictures I hope to take this year I decided I needed to record the details of the photographs I take so I can look back and see the settings I had used.

One of the very first Filofax inserts I created/recreated was the Photography Exposure Record, I had some of these old Filofax inserts from the 1980's but they are no longer available.

Having used my own version I decided that there were a couple of things I could do to improve on the original version.

1980's Photo Exposure Record insert

Like the original I decided to do it in Personal size because this is very easy to carry around in my camera bag and it lends it self well for note taking whilst out and about. I also kept it in landscape format so that the rings don't get in the way, even less so in a slimline organiser. In the photos it is in a Holborn, but I also have a Finsbury which has smaller rings.

Original version at the top and the new version below

The reverse side is the same format, printed on to Filofax Plain paper

I'm sharing these inserts with you so if there any of you that are film photographers then you can use them too.

Photo Insert to be printed on Personal size paper: Word or PDF
Photo Insert to be printed on Personal on A4 sized paper: Word or PDF

Of course I could have used a smart phone app, or a simple notebook, but where is the fun in that!

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. In the post 2020 Revamped series you just change the Year in the Year sheet. 

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 source file there are a couple of things you need to do on the new file it creates.

1. 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. 
2. 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.

Time to rationalise your organiser

On Monday I wrote about printing my diary inserts for next year. Once those are printed and punched it will time to add those extra pages to my organiser. 

To fit them in I think it will be time to run through my other inserts and check though them to see what updating, what I can archive or recycle. 

I am still a lover or should that be a hoarder of printed maps, but I really shouldn't be carrying them all of the time! I will be removing quite a few of those which will make quite a bit of room on the rings, especially as some of them are printed on quite heavy weight paper (Transport For London).

My organiser holds a lot of miscellaneous information, it will therefore be a good opportunity to review a lot of those pages too. 

What sort of annual contents review do you do? Or do you do it more often?   

Printed or printing of inserts in the EU

A fairly frequent question. 

Where can I get Philofaxy inserts printed in the EU?

A printing service where the customer supplies the file and they print it out to order. 

Or

Where can I buy printed inserts in the EU?

This is often inserts other than those for sale by Filofax, I think everyone is aware of those. 

If you can answer either of these questions, please leave a comment below. 

Thanks

Portrait or Landscape?

We sometimes see people comment that they don't get on with using a ring bound planner because the rings get in the way when writing.  

I can understand this issue. For right handed people, writing on the left hand page of your open organiser can be an issue, and conversely for left handed people writing on the right hand page can be an issue. 

I personally don't find it too difficult when using an A5 or bigger organiser, you tend to be writing towards the left hand margin more in those size formats. [For information, I'm right handed, my writing is bad enough without needing to make it look worse!]

Certainly in a personal size it can be an issue, especially with larger rings. 

One solution I have used was to move the sections around so the diary section (the most used section) was towards the middle of the stack of pages. This means there is less of a 'jump' over the rings from one side to the other!. 

Another solution in Personal Size would be to switch to landscape pages, like this example below.  

By rotating the organiser through 90 degrees to write in it solve the problem though? 

Does writing on the 'upper' page become just as much an issue for both left and right handed people as it does with the pages in portrait aspect? 

Food Diary

When you retire you will have a lot more spare time..... to visit your health care specialists and the doctors!!  Not quite!!

As part of monitoring my health, our wonderful French Health Service takes a huge interest in a lot of normal health parameters, such as weight, blood pressure, diet, blood tests etc etc. 

Before moving to France I rarely saw my Doctor, these days it seems to be every 3-6 months. But I'm not complaining, it's good to have this level of care. 

I've mentioned about doing blood pressure tests and logging the results before. At my most recent visit to see my Doctor, I was given an information sheet (en francais of course) to log my food intake for a week prior to my next appointment. 

It seemed like a great opportunity for another insert! I've translated the sheet in to English and created it as an A4 insert. The boxes are then a sensible size to write in. After punching the left hand edge, fold it in half and then back to the right hand edge. (Z fold).

Download the file here: 

• Food Diary (Word)
• Food Diary (PDF)

Bon appétit et bonne santé !!

Tracking Your Weight Loss In Your Organiser

Keeping in trim and keeping a close watch on your own weight is not easy. 

Yes some of us are blessed with the ability to be able to eat anything without our weight increasing a pound/kilogram, sadly I am not one of those people!! 

I'm sure a lot of you use an 'app' to keep a track on your weight and other health data. But if you aren't comfortable about sharing this sort of information with a faceless corporation somewhere on the internet then a paper record kept in your organiser is much more private. 

I've devised this simple monthly record sheet in Personal size and A5 size that you can download and print, modify it as well if you wish. 

I think it is fairly self-explanatory in how you can use it. I've entered 1-31 for any month, but you can remove those if you wish. 

Enter your start weight and the date and your target weight in the header box. Then enter your weight each day, you can then simply work out how much you have lost/gained since the last weigh in. The next box is the total weight loss since you started. The notes will allow you to record things like 'Heavy meal' 'Hard exercise day' or what ever. It will help you spot trends and it might help you adjust your intake/exercise regime to benefit your weight loss goals. 

Before you start any form of diet it is best to seek medical advice as to what you should be aiming your target weight to be compared to your current weight. 

Here are the files:

• Personal size Weight Record 
• A5 size Weight Record PDF

Download the files and you can print them direct on to Personal Size paper, or A5 paper, or scale to A6 size paper. 

As always: 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.Please download, adapt, use, share, but do not charge or use commercially.

Updating Your Wardrobe?

As Winter slowly turns to Spring and hopefully Summer, you might be looking at your wardrobe with thoughts about what needs updating and what needs replacing. 

With the change of working habits these last two years less people are wearing suits and more comfortable 'Working At Home' wear is the new norm. 

To help you decide what to consider buying I've created a simple insert for you to record your sizes and then list what you might need to buy. 

The insert is in Personal size and A5 size, printing direct to Personal size or A5 size paper. You will also be able to scale it (71%) to A6 size if you wish. 

As always you can customise the insert to meet your own local requirements e.g. Trousers in England equals Pants in the USA! 

Why write things down? Well I will admit clothes shopping isn't one of my favourite past-times and there is nothing worse that having bought something in a shop or on-line, trying it on and then having to return it because you ordered the wrong size!

• A5 Clothing - Word PDF
• Personal Clothing - Word

As always: 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.Please download, adapt, use, share, but do not charge or use commercially.

Know Your Numbers

When did you last have your blood pressure checked? Do you 'know your numbers'? Having your blood pressure checked is quite a simple thing to do on a regular basis. 

If you don't have your own monitor to do the check your local pharmacy will have one or you can buy one, they aren't too expensive. 

High or low blood pressure gives rise to lots of other medical conditions. I'm no medical expert, but there are plenty of on-line help pages that explain the conditions and how your blood pressure can be controlled. 

However, this isn't by any stretch of the imagination an on-line medical blog! If you are doing regular blood pressure checks on the instruction of your doctor, then this insert will not doubt help you record the numbers, there a lot of them! 

Doctors vary, but mine asked me to do three measurements spaced by a few minutes twice a day, so three in the morning and three in the evening. 

I have created this insert in A5 size and Personal size, it might scale ok to A6 size as well depending on how neat your hand writing is. 

• Blood Pressure Record - A5 size Word and PDF
• Blood Pressure Record - Personal size Word

Pill Reminder

I have hit that age were I have to take regular medication every day. 

However, did I take it... did I not take it? Ahhh my very short term memory is rubbish. Walk in to a room and I've already forgotten why I am there! Well may be not quite that bad, but you know what I mean. 

Yes I can have electronic reminders for these things, but they are too easy to 'cancel' or ignore. 

To combat this I created a new insert for my 'notebook' organiser, a personal size that normally sits on my bedside table.  The action of taking a pill out of the packet and then striking a line through the symbol on the page seems to work.... for me anyway!

I think it's fairly self explanatory. My medication comes in packs of 28 pills, they are arranged in four columns of 7 pills. A week at a time. One lot of pills are white... the other red! 

You can of course edit the form to suit your own medication numbers/colours and if you want to you can of course adjust the sizing to fit other page sizes as required. 

It is available here in Word and PDF formats. Print one side then the other separately and you will save paper. 

I quickly did an A6 version as well, to be printed on A6 size paper.

Stay healthy!

Inserts for the new academic year

This work by Philofaxy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. Please download, adapt, use, share, but do not charge or use commercially.

Whilst schools are close to finishing their academic year, the new school year will soon appear over the horizon. 

One of the participants in a recent 'Virtual Meet-up' on Skype shared with me an old Filofax insert that is no longer in print. I've adapted the design a little to meet modern day requirements. 

We start with a Course Record for keeping a track of those high grade marks in all subject through the year!

• A4/A5/B5(Deskfax)/B6/A6 - Course Record insert
• Letter size - Course Record insert

The second side of the above insert might be this Timetable. Combine them if you wish. 

• A4/A5/B5(Deskfax)/B6/A6 - Timetable Insert
• Letter size - Timetable Insert

I have also created a combine Course Record/Timetable insert for Personal size on A4 Paper. 

• Personal size on A4 Paper - Course Record/Timetable insert.

When printing any of the above inserts remember to 'scale to fit' the appropriate size paper with the exception of the Personal on A4, just print at 100% and cut and punch to suit. 

This work by Philofaxy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. Please download, adapt, use, share, but do not charge or use commercially.

Filofax Lifestyle Refills

Filofax have recently announced a new series of inserts in A5, Personal and A5 notebook sizes. 

They are available in three different designs and each one comes as a pack of 56 sheets. 

Shown below is the Project and Goals insert. Set goals and prioritise to-dos with our Personal Projects & Goals tracker refill, a great aid for speeding up the workload.

For those of you that plan your meals at the start of the week, the Meal Planner insert looks perfect to be included in your organiser. The grocery list on the reverse side is a great addition. You could have a selection of these that you could reuse every few weeks and you would have the basic essentials prepared for all the meals planned. 

The Wellness Goals insert includes space to record various things for each day of the week. With a diary type space on the reverse for each day. This insert would form a great addition to your organiser for a health section, or as part of a dedicated health organiser. Like the others it is available in Personal size and A5 size for rings or the Filofax A5 notebooks. 

You will find these inserts available at Filofax UK and other local outlets. 

The Philofaxy Guide to Diary Inserts

Having the best diary inserts and other pages in your organiser is key to your organiser helping you each and every day. 

It doesn't matter if you have the most expensive organiser on the market, without the right inserts for your needs it will not help you meet your goals and targets every day. 

Given that our measurement of time is split in to years, months, weeks, days, hours and minutes. It is natural that diary inserts are split in the same way. There are of course some variations to take consideration of as well. 

Going for a finer division of time per page (day per page) whilst it gives you more visibility of each day, allowing you to divide the page by smaller increments of time, the problem is of course more pages and the loss of visibility of the rest of the future days without flipping the pages constantly. 

A coarser division of time say a month per view or month per page gives you a better view of past and future days, but lacks the detail unless you increase the page size to allow more space per day in the lines or boxes. 

Somewhere in the middle we have week view or week per page. This is the compromise that most people tend to go for. However, there are plenty of variations to consider.  

Supply - Where are you going to obtain your inserts from? There are regular stores both 'brick and mortar' and on-line stores to be able to get pre-printed and pre-punched inserts from.  

There are numerous sources of inserts that you can download and print yourself including Philofaxy of course! Etsy is another favourite site to be able to purchase downloadable files for a fee. 

If you want to retain the same design/layout/size for many years in to the future, you are reliant on those particular inserts still being made available or being sold in future. If you pick a popular size/layout then it shouldn't be too much of an issue. 

Design your own  - There is a lot of satisfaction in designing your own inserts, as you can adjust the design incrementally to suit your needs. It might take you a few attempts to nail the design to perfection, but you know it will always be available and you can print out parts of a year or future years well ahead of time if you plan meetings 4-5 years from now! Some people do... 

If you don't want to dive in the 'deep-end' and design one from scratch you can take one of the Philofaxy designs and modify it to your own requirements without too much difficulty. It's not a beginners job, but it should be within the scope of most people with a bit of thought and preparation. 

Monday or Sunday start - Both are possible on pre-printed inserts, although you will find most countries tend to use Monday start. There are people that want other days of the week as a start to their week because of their shift work patterns... they really do have to 'design their own' 

Week numbers - Do you use Week numbers... depending where you are in the world there are three standards for week numbering, it falls in with what day is considered the start of the week. We purposely don't include the week numbers on Philofaxy inserts because of the three different standards in the world. You can always write them on if you wish!  

Size, Portability, Annual cost - Test out your chosen size of inserts to death, not just a few days, give it at least two or three weeks before you decide on the size. Test the size with ordinary blank paper of the size with a hand drawn insert or if you can print off a few weeks even better. 

The size you pick will impact on the portability, how easy is that size of organiser able to fit in to your bag, backpack or fit on your desk when open. A4 is a great size until you see how much desk real estate they take up! 

Do you actually need printed inserts? - What!! Think about the simplicity of the Bulletin Journal, a lot of people use that format or a variation on that format. 

We also have 'undated' diary files on Philofaxy you can download and print yourself, you just write in the dates on the sheets, they might work just as well for you, alternatively you can use them for advance planning for far off dates so details are not missed without having to have a full year printed off. 

When to change?  You don't have to change over on 1 January, you also don't need to be able to fit in a full 12 months in to your organiser. Some people only carry a couple of months of inserts at a time. They have a routine of archiving past pages and adding future pages on a weekly or monthly basis. They supplement their inserts with a set of monthly inserts or a year planner to cover the full 12 months of the year so nothing falls through the cracks. 

Remember you will find all the Philofaxy inserts for the current year here.... All the inserts for future years here... and a for past years here. 

Just to recap the format of our inserts changes from 2022 onwards, this post fully explains the changes. 

I hope this post has opened your mind to some other ideas, to help you solve the problem of finding the perfect diary inserts for your needs... 

Enhanced Time Manager Week on One Page A5 Diary Insert.

This work by Philofaxy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. Please download, adapt, use, share, but do not charge or use commercially.


'The Times They Are a Changing' sang Bob Dylan a long time ago!

Talking with our readers on the Virtual Meet Up Skype calls we have been having in April, quite a few of us have said that their planning and what their needs for their planner has changed drastically over the last few weeks as Covid-19 has got longer and longer.

You will all be familiar with the Enhanced Time Manager Week per View (week on two pages) insert that I came up with a few years ago, it has been my 'go to' insert for over 8 years. There have been several variations on this one over the years, but the basic format hasn't changed that much.

So I thought I would try a Week on One Page version of it. It reduces the number of pages you would need to carry.

Naturally you can easily adjust the headings, shading, fonts etc to suit your own needs/requirements by editing the source file and redoing the mail merge.

Source Files:

•  Word file and Excel File (you will need both)

Note to change the year or the 12 months covered you just need to edit cell A2 of the Excel file. 

You can download finished versions for this year from our diary inserts page.  

When printing note these files are formatted to be A4 page size. Either Booklet print on to A4 paper or Print on to A5 paper scale to fit (70%)

This version will be known as the 'Week on one page Enhanced TM' insert

To customise the files you will need to download the relevant source files listed above. When you've made all the changes you like to the template, you can perform a mail merge to create your own insert for any period you like. Check out our Free Diary Inserts link if you want more information on how to do this, including videos at the bottom of the page.

Once again a big thank you to Ray at 'My Life All In One Place' for his hard work and co-operation with helping to create and support us with all these inserts.

This work by Philofaxy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. Please download, adapt, use, share, but don't charge or use commercially.

Diary Inserts for 2020

The New Year is just over two weeks away, what better time to get your diary inserts printed, if you haven't done them already.

Take a look at last weeks post about getting the best from the diary inserts

If you haven't made the leap yet in to using the Philofaxy inserts, it is a skill worth mastering, because you will always have the format of your choice available. You won't be disappointed when something becomes 'discontinued'

Visit the Diary Inserts page and take your pick of 2020 inserts, we have also created inserts for 2021 as well already.

Thank you to Ray Blake of the My Life All in One Place blog for his continued support in maintaining the diary inserts.

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.

1. 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. 
2. 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.