Oct

25

Lion, iCloud, and Bento…

Filed Under Bento Basics, Bento Bugs, Bento Issues, Bento News, Bento Tips, Editorial | 6 Comments

Urgent recommendations to all Bento users who are not in the habit of doing so:
Check the Bento Forums regularly (link on the sidebar) for any known issues, look at recent user posts, and report all technical issues there as well.
These forums are moderated by Filemaker employees who have extensive testing facilites and personnel and are not afraid to use them. We don’t have any resources like that at BentoUsers.

Let me repeat the most recent issue:
Before you migrate from Mobile Me to iCloud or otherwise turn on on iCloud,
do this:
Make sure you have Bento 4.06
Launch it.
Quit Bento.

After that, you should be ready to surf the new Clouds.

Since Mobile Me will be available until June 30, 2012, I personally am not in a hurry to get OSX Lion and iCloud. But since there are very few issues which have been reported in the Bento forums, I have to assume that Bento is generally ready for the transition. That doesn’t mean that the problems reported here on BentoUsers are not real. But they are not the norm, but rather horrible bad luck.
Still, let’s all keep our eyes and ears open…

Apr

10

New Free Service: iChat Screen-Sharing!

Filed Under Bento Basics, Editorial | 8 Comments

I get many emails through our contact form at BentoUsers describing specific Bento project dreams… mostly ones where people have trouble finding existing templates for. Some new Bento users also have a problem getting started with the program. I found out that it’s much easier and faster to do personal one-on-one iChat sessions with screen-sharing to tackle their problems rather than going back and forth with emails.
That way I helped several people in recent months to get a good initial grasp of Bento and/or their projects.

So today I would publicly like to offer my bilingual iChat services (English or German). If you’re stuck with Bento or any project, just leave a comment here and I’ll email you to set up an online meeting.

Feb

14

How To – Template Sharing Part Two

Filed Under Bento Basics, Bento Tips | 3 Comments

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…

Jan

14

How To – Template Sharing Part One

Filed Under Bento Basics, Bento Tips | Leave a Comment

Bento Template sharing is a wonderful way of learning and teaching the many possible uses of Bento. But it is not always easy to create a “clean” Template for sharing, especially when Address Book and iCal Libraries are involved. So I’ll share some tips today.
I haven’t played with Templates including Related Data from iPhoto. That will be an interesting addition for a future post.

Recently I received a Template for evaluation that included a Smart Collection from Address Book. The author chose to include Address Book as a Related Library. To do that you just have to click a check box in the “export Template” dialog. The result was that I got all of his 39 Address Book Collections in the bargain! That also means that 39 new groups were created in Mac Address Book!
As described in my article Unexpected Template Behavior Bento can’t make the distinction if you just have a Related Data field of one Address Book Collection in your Template. It includes all Forms and Collections!
Read more

Jan

10

Template Exchange Problems!

Filed Under Bento Basics, Bento Tips | Leave a Comment

First off I want to apologize for all those recent negative posts. We’ll hopefully tip the scale soon. I’m just trying to make users aware of the problems. It’s not my fault that there are so many of them piling up. I’m just not the person who will ignore bad issues.

More bad news today…

Be careful when downloading templates from the Bento Template Exchange at Filemaker. Apparently, they accept most templates without checking them out first. Many are designed very poorly, some are even corrupt. Also, inexperienced users in the forums complain, because they don’t even know how to use the templates without instructions.

We don’t have that many templates here on our site, but our quality control and service is included:
I will not publish a template without testing it first and improving it, if necessary.
Secondly, every template will be described as to its features and usage and will include original-size screen shots.
Finally, you can always leave comments, especially useful for any open questions.

Tip: remember, a template is only a starting point. Your exact personal needs might be different. So read the user’s guide to help you modifying a template.

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