Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's) contain the answers to the most asked questions about Now X. Click on any of the questions below to get detailed answers.

Overall -

Registration/Installation -

Initial setup -

Syncing -

General Operation -

Main View:

Panels:

Info Window:

Other:

Printing -

Troubleshooting -

Overall:

What is Now X?

Now X is the next generation of Now Up-to-Date & Contact, our award winning calendar and contact management software suite.

Included in Now X are:

• Now Up-to-Date X

• Now Contact X

For more information on the product, go to: http://www.nowsoftware.com/nowxsubsite

Should I upgrade to Now X or stick with version 5?

If your need is for a single-user calendar and contact manager then Now X is your best bet. Now X syncs to iPhones and is designed for the lastest Apple technologies, including Intel-based Macintsoh computers. But the Now X server is not available yet. So if using the server and sharing calendar and contact information between computers is essential, then you'll want to go with version 5 for now. Check out this comparison page for more details.

How long can I use the demo of Now X?

When you sign up for a demo license of Now X, it will expire thirty days later. After thirty days, access to the software will be disabled, but all data will remain in the application and all you need to do is purchase a license using the same account.

Registration/Installation Questions:

How do I get Now X?

Refer to the Quick Start article for full details on how to register and get Now X. Go to the article Getting Started.

What are the system requirements for Now X?

Now X is designed for:

• Intel-based computers

• 2G of RAM

• Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard or 10.6 Snow Leopard

Because Now X is designed to take advantage of newer technologies, we recommend an Intel processor with two gigabytes of RAM. Minimum system requirements are PPC-based computers with 1G of RAM. Now X runs on Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

Now X for Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 is in development and will have similar hardware requirements.

I've registered but haven't gotten an email. Why?

After completing the registration form, you should have received an email from Now Software explaining how to activate your account.

If you didn't recieve this email after 30 minutes, please check the spam folder(s) on your email account. If the email cannot be found, you can request to have the email re-sent to your email address. Do this by going to the registration site http://betareg.nowsoftware.com/ and following the link for "Having Trouble Registering".

NOTE: We are currently having trouble with certain email hosts (Comcast, Earthlink) which are marking our email as spam. If you are using one of them, you may want to setup a free GMail account to receive your registration information.

Initial setup:

What are the welcome screens when I first run the application?

There is a welcome process that walks through setting up your Now X account for the first time, including importing in existing Now Up-to-Date & Contact files if that application is installed on your system, as well as setting the default sync settings for your calendars and contacts. Learn more about these screens in the Quick Start article titled Getting Started.

What can I import? How do I do that?

Now X currently supports importing Now Up-to-Date v5.x and iCalendar event files. Now Contact X currently supports importing Now Contact v5.x and vCard files.

The import command is found under the File menu. Note that for Now Up-to-Date & Contact files, their name must end in .nud and .nct respectively.

Please refer to the article on Importing for more information.

Import text files

If you want to import a comma/tab delimited text file into Now X, you will have to do this through Now Up-to-Date & Contact 5 for now since Now X does not yet support the import of such files.

To do that download version 5.3.2 here and install it. When asked for your serial number, simply click the Demo button to use the software free for 30 days. Then import your file into Now Up-to-Date (click here for instructions) or into Now Contact.

What are all these new buttons on the main Now X window?

The layout has changed quite a bit from NUDC v5. All these options will make things easier eventually, but it can be confusing at first. To help, we've put up this guide for better understanding of the Now X user interface.

How do I make Now X my primary source for contacts and events?

When you install Now X and begin syncing, the usual behavior is for Now X to first get all of the calendar and contact data in from The Truth before syncing its data out. That means that data entered in iCal and Address Book will be automatically imported into Now X. But what if you don't want that? What if you want the data in your Now Up-to-Date & Contact file to be imported into Now X and overwrite any data in Address Book and iCal?

To make the data in Now X overwrite data in Address Book, you can do the following:

1. Clear the Address Book database. You can either use the "Clear Address Book" button in the Now X Preferences panel at Sync -> Utilities -> Clear Address Book, or you can use the Clear Address Book script located in the /Applications/Now X/Extras folder. They both do the same thing.

2. Reset sync history. You can either use the "Reset Sync History" button in the Now X Preferences panel at Sync -> Utilities -> Clear Address Book, or you can use the Reset Sync History script located in the /Applications/Now X/Extras folder. They both do the same thing.

3. After installing and starting Now X, tell Now X to sync contacts using the File -> Sync Now -> Sync Contacts menu item.

At that point, Address Book and Sync history will be blank slates and the data from Now X will be synced into them. To do the same for iCal, use our corresponding iCal scripts.

Syncing Questions:

How can I sync NUDC information to my iPhone or other device?

See our "How to" for a detailed guide on getting syncing set up and what all the different options mean.

How does syncing work? / What is Sync Services?

Now Up-to-Date & Contact can be imported into Now X. Then the Now Up-to-Date & Contact files are left alone. There is no additional syncing that happens.

Anything in Now X that is tagged to sync will be sent to Apple's built in background tool: Sync Services. From there it syncs with any other application and phone that asks for it. Additions, updates, changes, and deletions made in any of these will then be sent back to Sync Services and from there, go to all of the other applications.

For a list of compatable phones, go to http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2824

How do I troubleshoot syncing?

If you are having problems syncing your data, it's likely that there is a configuration issue. There may be one of two things happening.

1. The event or contact you added may not be set to sync. Before an event or a contact will sync, it needs to have the Sync tag assigned to it. That is "off" by default. (The default setting has been changed to "on" for PB2.) To see if it's marked to sync, open its detail view and click on the tag icon in the detail badge on the left side of the detail view. You should see a tag capsule with the name "Sync" there if the sync tag is assigned to that event or contact.

Contact Detail View showing a contact with the Sync tag assigned to it.

If it's not tagged to sync, there are serveral ways for you to assign the sync tag. To learn more about assigning tags, click here.

If you want new contacts and events to sync by default, you can define that in their template preferences (shown below). Each time an item is created, it will be created using the values set in its template.

If the Sync tag is assigned to all the contacts and events you want to sync, and your data is still not syncing properly, it's possible that you have the syncing preferences disabled. To check this, open the Preferences panel and click on the Sync button in the Now X section.

Click the Sync button in the Now X section of the Preferences Panel to view the Sync preferences.

After clicking the Sync button, the Sync preferences panel will be displayed.

The Sync preferences panel

If the checkboxes for syncing are not turned on, then syncing your data to iCal and Address book will not be performed. Click the checkbox to enable syncing for contacts and events. For more information on syncing, see the section on Syncing.

How do I clear Now X, Address Book, and/or iCal and start fresh with syncing?

If you're still having trouble syncing after reading the troubleshooting guide, you might want to try clearing any database with duplicate information... meaning, if all of your contacts are in Now X, you can clear Address Book. If all of your events are in Now X you can clear iCal. If all of your contacts AND events are in Address Book and iCal, you can clear Now X. NOTE: If you need to preserve information from both Now X and Address Book/iCal, skip clearing the databases and go on to reset Sync Services.

To clear the Now X database: go to Now X > Preferences > Database > Maintenance, and click "Clear."

To clear iCal: go to Now X > Preferences > Sync, and click Utilities. First choose "Backup iCal" then when that finishes, choose "Clear iCal"

To clear Address Book: go to Now X > Preferences > Sync, and click Utilities. First choose "Backup Address Book" then when that finishes, choose "Clear Address Book"

When any databases you wish to clear have been cleared, you should then Reset Sync Services by going to Now X > Preferences > Sync, and clicking Utilities, then Reset Sync Services.

Are there any additional syncing tips?

If you want to watch the syncing progress, you can click on the "Activity" icon, which is the third icon on the bottom left of the Now X screen and you'll see it working.

Once your data has been synced with Sync Services, you can view the data in AddressBook, iCal, or any other application that uses Sync Services. You can also follow Apple's procedure to sync your data to your iPhone, iPod, other mobile phone or other device supported by sync services.

For more information on syncing the iPhone or iPod using iTunes, please visit http://www.apple.com/iphone/how-to/#get-started.syncing-with-itunes.

For information on syncing other devices using iSync, visit http://www.apple.com/support/isync/.

What do the different Advanced Sync options do?

On the Macintosh, Now X syncs data using Sync Services to the system's Truth database. The Truth database is the core database of information that is synced to Now X, AddressBook, iCal, the iPhone, and other sync clients. The following are the various sync modes that Now X uses:

Default Sync: This is the normal mode for syncing. The first time Default Sync runs it does the same thing as a Slow Sync. After that it does the same as a Fast Sync.

Slow Sync: In this mode, Now X pushes all of its information to Sync Services, waits while Sync Services integrates that information with the Truth database, and then pulls the changes that Sync Services has decided need to be pulled. While this is happening, Sync Services also builds a snapshot of Now X's current state, so that Now X can then Fast Sync.

Fast Sync: In this mode, if the Truth database contains a valid snapshot of Now X's data, then Now X and Sync Services can use a Fast Sync, in which Now X pushes and pulls only changed information. Most sync sessions are Fast Syncs.

Refresh Sync: Sometimes you may want to reset Now X and purge all of its shared data. When that happens, Now X requests a Refresh Sync, in which Now X pushes nothing and pulls everything Sync Services has to offer. In a Refresh Sync, Sync Services also deletes the old snapshot and creates a new one. You will rarely use a Refresh Sync except at the suggestion of Now Software's technical support.

General Operation Questions:

How do I name an Untitled Tab?

To name a tab just double click on the tab name so it is highlighted:

Then type in a new name:

What's the difference between Tab, Set, and Style?

Now X has several new concepts designed to allow you to easily configure the product. Some of these ideas were present in Now Up-to-Date and Contact, but in Now X we've taken these ideas a little further. So, here is an explanation of the hierarchy and relationship between tabs, sets, and styles.

A workspace window contains one or more tabs.

A tab controls what panels are displayed: whether the category, tag, activity, mini-month, task list, or inline detail view panels are displayed; which panel is the main panel in the middle of the window; what the size of the window and the various panels within it are, and what the current search text is for filtering.

A tab also has one set associated with it. The set controls which categories and tags are turned on or off, and the categories and tags are used to filter the data being displayed. For example, if you have all your categories and tags turned on, all you data will be displayed. If you turn off a category, any data that has only that category assigned to it will no longer be displayed. Data will be displayed if any category turned on is assigned to a contact or event. If you click on one tag to add it to the set, only data that has that tag assigned to it will be displayed. If you click on an additional tag, any data that has either of the two tags assigned to it will be displayed.

A tab also has one style associated with it. The style controls how data is displayed: what font typeface and size are used; whether day names are shown; what columns are displayed in lists and what the sort order is; background colors for various types of day cells; what event types are displayed; whether word wrapping is turned on or off, etc. Basically, anything set in the Properties panels are stored in the style.

In previous beta versions of Now X, all this data was stored in a "tab", which we found was not flexible enough to accommodate having multiple workspace windows open. If everything was stored in a tab, you'd have to recreate the list of categories you want to see data for, plus all your panel properties every time you opened a new window. But, with separate sets and styles, you can reuse this information in multiple workspace windows much more conveniently. The only structure that does not cross window boundaries is the tab itself, which belongs to only one workspace window at a time. Closing a window will result in that tab information being deleted from the database; there currently is no way to "bookmark" a tab for future reference. But, the sets and styles are stored in the database, so you can easily set up a new tab using the saved set or style.

The QuickContact and QuickDay icons do not appear in my menu bar. How can I enable them?

* Note: QuickContact and QuickDay do not currently work under Snow Leopard, but this should soon be fixed.

If your QuickContact icon doesn't appear in the menubar, go to the QuickContact preferences panel by clicking on the QuickContact button in the Contact section of the Preferences panel. In that panel, you will see a checkbox that lets you turn on and off the QuickContact menu.

If your QuickDay icon doesn't appear in the menubar, go to the QuickDay preferences panel by clicking on the QuickDay button in the Calendar section of the Preferences panel. In that panel, you will see a checkbox that lets you turn on and off the QuickDay menu.

If they still don't appear:

1. In the Finder, go to /Applications/Now X folder
2. Control-click on Now X.app and choose "Show Package Contents"
3. Go into the Contents folder and then the MenuExtras folder.
4. Double-click on all 1 on the calendar .menu files. QuickDay should show up in the menubaar at the top. If nothing happens, try the 2nd calendar .menu file.
5. Do the same for the contact .menu files.

I used multiple files in NUDC. How do I set up Now X to keep these files seperate?

Import the files one by one, each time tagging them in a way that you will be able to identify them later. These tags will then be used to make different Sets in Now X wherein only specific contacts or events are shown.

For example, let's say you have 3 contact files: one called Business.nct, one called Friends.nct, and one called Family.nct

- Open up Now X.
- Go to File > Import.

A window opens up where you can choose your file:
- Select Busines.nct and click Open.

Import Options will then appear.
-Check the box to "Tag all imported contacts with:" and type in: "Business" then click Import.

Now it will import your contacts from that file. Once it is finished:
- Create a new Tab by going to Workspace > New Tab, and rename that tab "Business Contacts" by double clicking on it and typing the new name.

- In the bottom left of the window, you see three buttons. Click on the first two (Categories and Tags) to make those panels appear on the left side of the window.
- Then, in the toolbar, where you see New, View, and Action, to the right of those you see a drop down box that says Set.
- Click on the drop down box and choose Edit sets...
- Click the plus sign to create a new set and rename it to Business, and hit OK.
- Now in the Tag Panel, click on the tag you just created called Business. Then only the contacts tagged as business will show.

Now that tab called Business Contacts is set up to show only everything imported from the Business.nct file. Note that when you now go back to a different tab, it still shows the default set and thus, all of your contacts, not just the ones tagged Business. Then when you click back to the Business Contacts tab, it still shows only your Business contacts.

Now all you have to do is repeat this procedure for your other NUDC files.

You can then set up templates for each of your contact types so you can quickly make a new "Family Contact" with the Family tag already applied. To learn more about creating Templates, please refer to this How To.

What is this Unfiled category, and how do I get rid of it?

The unfiled set cannot be deleted, but will disappear if you delete all of it's contents or put everything into categories.

You can delete everything by first setting only the unfiled category information to display:

- On the bottom left of your screen are three buttons click on the one on the left (Categories) and your categories panel will show on the left of your screen. Next to the word categories at the top of the panel, click the none button, then check only the Unfiled category.

Next, go to View > Event List (for events) or View > Contact List (for contacts) and then go to Edit > Select all to highlight them all. Then go to Edit > Delete.

To learn how to assign categories, read this How To.

How do I edit, view, amd delete Categories?

You can view the Categories in the Categories Panel which appears on the left side of your window when the Categories button is activated (blue.) You can find this button in the lower left corner of the Now X window. It is the one on the far left that looks like three lines.

You can add a new category by clicking the green plus sign to the right of the word Contacts for contact categories or Calendar for calendar categories.

You can then delete that category by highlighting it and clicking the red minus sign that appears.

To learn about assigning contacts or events to categories, read this How To.

How do I view, add, or delete Tags?

You can view the Tags in the Tags Panel which appears on the left side of your window when the Tags button is activated (blue.) You can find this button in the lower left corner of the Now X window. It is the middle button that looks like a picture of a tag.

If you wish to add a tag, click the green plus sign to the right of the word Tags at the top of the Tags Panel.

If you wish to delete a tag, highlight it, then click the red minus sign that appears.

To learn about assigning tags to contacts or events to categories, read this How To.

How do I use Marked?

You can display the Marked field in your contact list by clicking on the up/down arrows to the right of the field headers, and choosing Marked.

You can then click in the boxes to mark any contacts you wish to mark.

To show just the Marked contacts in your list, display the Tags Panel and then select the Marked tag.

How do I use Hidden?

To hide contacts, first you have to go to Edit > Show Hidden.

You can then assign the Hidden tag to any contacts you would like to hide.

Then go to Edit > Hide Hidden to hide them again.

All of my contacts/events disappeared! How do I get them back?

If your contacts or events disappeared, and it says "0 of [any number over 0]" contacts/events at the bottom of the window, your contacts or events are not gone, they are simply set not to show in the list. To get them to show again, check the following things:

In the bottom left corner of the window, click the categories button to make it active (blue means active.) Then, in the categories panel, make sure all of the categories are checked.
Back in the bottom left corner of the window, click the tags button to make it active (blue means active.) Then, in the tags panel, make sure NONE of the tags are highlighted. You can do this by clicking somewhere in the blue background area in the tags panel.
In the filter bar in the top right corner of the window, make sure there is nothing typed in the box. Even if it looks like nothing is there, put your mouse there and hit the "delete" key on your keyboard to delete any spaces that might be there.
For contacts only: there is a bar across the top of the window with the letters of the alphabet. On the left hand side of that, click the "All" button.

Where are my notes?

In the contact info window, in the bottom left, there are two buttons. Click on the first one, "Attachment List" to activate it (it's blue when activated.)

Then a list appears with all the Notes, Emails, Documents, Contacts, and Events associated with the contact.

To learn more about adding attachments, read this How To.

How do I set a phone number, email address, etc... as Primary?

There are two ways:

1) Open the contact Detail window, right-click on the item and select "set as primary".

2) In the contact List view, make sure the Primary (Primary phone, Primary email, etc.) column is showing, click the small black arrows at the right of the field, and select the appropriate item. (Note: the category must already be attached to a contact/event as a subcategory in order for it to show in the list.)

How do I set up/edit a template?

To edit templates, go to the Preferences... menu command. Click the "Event Templates" button, and a preferences panel is displayed that allows you to create and edit templates. For more details, check out our "How to" on templates.

How do I add items in the graphics palette?

- From the menubar go to Window > Show Graphics Palette

- Click on the popup menu at the bottom of the palette and choose Add Collection.

- Give the new collection a name.

- Then you can add graphics to the new collection by Drag ingand Droping a graphic onto the palette. Or you can click the plus sign and browse to the pictures location in the Finder.

Printing Questions:

What's the difference between Print and Print Workspace?

You may have noticed that when you go to the File menu to print, there are two options: Print and Print Workspace.

File > Print looks something like this:

Whereas, File > Print Workspace prints all of the panels you have showing, like this:

Print Workspace

How do I set up and print Labels?

First, select from Contact List the contacts you would like to make labels for:

Then switch to Label View by clicking on View and choosing Labels:

Then, you can edit the labels by clicking on Properties in the top right:

In the properties window you can choose the type of label you have to use the preset dimentions, or you can create your own custom labels and manually set the number of rows and columns and set the margins:

Once you have your label layout chosen or a custom label created, you can click on the Address tab and choose which fields to display, which address to use, and what font, size, and style:

Once you have your labels set up as you would like them, you can print them by going to File > Print Labels.

How do I set up and print Envelopes?

First, select from your Contact List, the contacts you want to make an envelope for:

Then switch to Envelope View by clicking on View and choosing Envelopes:

Then, you can edit the envelopes by clicking on Properties in the top right:

In the Properties window, you can choose an envelope style preset, or create your own custom envelope by choosing custom. Then you can set the envelope size yourself:

Once you have your envelope style chose, you can choose what fields you would like to display in the mailing address and select a font, size, and style.

How do I set my return address for envlopes?

To add your return address to envelopes, first you must set your contact info by selecting yourself from your contact list (add yourself to your list first, if necessary) and then go to Contact > Make this My Contact Info.

Switch to Envelope view by going to the View button in the top left, and selecting Envelope.

Next, go to the Properties window in the top right, click on the Return Address tab. Then, above the tabs, click on the drop down next to Return address, and choose "My info" and your return address will appear.

Troubleshooting:

How do I report a bug?

Before reporting a bug, be sure you can reproduce the problem. Reduce the number of steps needed as much as possible. This helps the development and QA staff get to the source of an issue faster.

In order to streamline feedback, we have a Bug Reporter tool that is built into the application. This is the best way to report a problem and issues submitted via this mechanism will receive the most immediate feedback. These reports directly feed into our QA tracking system and the most efficient way to communicate.

The Report Bug... command in Help menu displays a Bug Reporter dialog with fields that you can use to enter bug report information, including:

Type and Severity: These fields allow you to select what type of issue you are reporting.

Summary: A short description of the problem or issue you are reporting.

Description: A detailed description of the problem or issue you are reporting. If it's a bug, please be as specific as possible on the steps to reproduce the issue. If necessary, use the screenshot tool at the bottom of the window to capture the screen and pass it along. If there are files related to your issue, they can be attached using the add attachment button at the bottom of the window.

Email: Please include your email address. This is critical for us to be able to contact you if we have further questions regarding the issue.

The Bug Reporter dialog lets you send a detailed message to Now Software.

When you're finished entering the information about the bug, hit the send button. Now X will then package up a set of data and send to our office. Note that on some systems the cd drive will engage during the send process, but this is normal.

If you are unable to launch the application, you can report any bugs using the Now Software Forum at: http://forum.nowsoftware.com

Thank you for your assistance!

How do I create a console.log?

One of the important debugging tools we have are console logs. Sometimes users are asked to provide these files in the course of working through a bug or issue.

For Mac OS X 10.4:

These are displayed in the Console application and look something like the following.

Console log on Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger).

To create a console.log file:

1. Launch the Console application at /Applications/Utilities/Console.app

2. Select the console.log in the area on the left of the window (see above). You many need to click the Logs icon in the toolbar to show that area.

3. Choose File -> Save a Copy As... to create a console.log file.

For Mac OS X 10.5:

For users running 10.5, the process is almost identical.

To create a console.log file:

1. Launch the Console application at /Applications/Utilities/Console.app

2. Select All Messages in the area on the left of the window (see above). You many need to click the Show Log List icon in the toolbar to show that area and you may need to twist down the Log Database Queries item.

3. Choose File -> Save a Copy As... to create a console.log file.

I can see two "Now X" processes running on my system - why?

Now X has three main components:
- Now X -- the main application
- Now X Agent -- the background application
- Now X Sync Apps -- applications that run during syncing

The Now X Agent does most of the heavy lifting for Now X. For example, it does all of the database management, display of reminders, implementing QuickContact and QuickDay, all of the syncing to Now X servers, most of the syncing with Sync Services, and many parts of the user interface.

Important: The Now X Agent is running almost all of the time. Even when you quit the Now X application, the agent is running so it can do background processing. To shut down both the main application and the agent, hold down the option key in the File menu. The Quit command then changes from "Quit Now X" to "Quit Now X Services". After installation, the Now X Agent will begin to run on startup of an account.

How do I Force Quit?

There are two processes that do most of the work for Now X. They are "Now X.app" and "Now X Agent.app". You can see these running in the Activity Monitor application (/Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor.app).

When you force quit "Now X.app" it will automatically quit "Now X Agent.app" as well.

NOTE: Now X stores its data in an ACID compliant database so that force quitting the agent shouldn't cause data loss for data already saved into the database.

How do I Quit the Agent?

The Now X Agent does a lot of the work for the Now X application. Sometimes when you quit, you may also want to quit the agent. (For example, if you have experienced an exception and want to make sure the agent is back to a good state.)

To quit the agent, hold down the option key when choosing the Quit menu item. When holding the option key, the "Quit Now X" menu item changes to "Quit Now X Services".

Now X Manual

Frequently Asked Questions