Feb

14

How To – Template Sharing Part Two

Filed Under Bento Basics, Bento Tips | Leave a Comment

As promised, today we’ll talk about importing “dirty” Bento Templates.
As a reminder, a dirty Template mostly includes unwanted Collections and Forms from iCal and/or Address Book.

Most important tip:
don’t just import a Template into your main (maybe only) database file!
For this purpose I keep a “fresh” Bento 3 database file on hand, in my Bento back-up folder. Then I save (back up) my current data and revert to the fresh database. Then I import the Template. Since I’m not using any Address Book Collections, I don’t have to worry about them. If you are using Collections (Groups), then make a list of them first, so you can check which new ones are added during import.

If you don’t have a fresh Bento database file, here is how to create one:
back up your current database file, quit Bento. Find the main database file at: user/library/application support/bento. Delete the bento.bentodb file. Re-start Bento; a fresh database file is automatically created. Now back up that file and call it “Freshbento3Data” or something similar. Now you can revert to a fresh database file any time you need to.

After you import a Template into a fresh Bento database file, check for strange Collections in Address Book and iCal. After you make sure which ones might be used by the Template, delete the stray Collections. Same goes for Forms.
In addition, you might get all Address Book/iCal Fields from the creator’s Bento. It’s too much work to deal with that issue in detail, just don’t be surprised if you run into some strange Field names once in a while…

Now you can re-export the cleaner Template and import it into your main database or any sub-set you’re using.

Happy templating…

Feb

3

Bento 3.0.3 Update Is A Hit!

Filed Under Bento News | 2 Comments

Get your Bento 3.0.3 update as soon as you can, it includes a big improvement:

Now, all iCal events with an End Date on or after 1/1/2008 will never be removed by Bento. In case you didn’t know, Bento had a four year window for events, based on the current date. Any event which was older than 2 years was automatically deleted from Bento (not from iCal). In case you had added custom information, that data was instantly gone for good, even from back-ups!

Good job, Ryan!