Getting Started


Video Tutorial: Pagico Overview

What is Pagico, and what does (and doesn’t) it do?

The icon of Pagico (R)

The icon of Pagico (R)

In short, Pagico is a information organizer which covers random notes, general information management as well as contact management. It was designed specifically for users who have to deal with tons of information in diversified topics, such as freelancers, home business, and educators.

Pagico’s data management capability allows users to centralize information in topics, and organize the topics efficiently using a variaty of features.

Its contact management section allows users to create profiles for people they deal with all the time, and maintain meeting notes and follow-up tasks easily.

The QuickNotes feature makes capturing random notes very easily. Combined with our MobileNote service, users can write notes on the go, with any email-capable device, such as iPhone, smart phone, or any public computer. And it doesn’t stop there. The notes are analyzed by Pagico, so the important information contained in the notes (such as dates and tasks) are recognized and can be easily used.

Pagico is not just a information container. It also helps users to keep track of their schedules with many tools, including an intuitive visual schedule flowchart.

So, What does it NOT do? Read More »

Activating your Pagico

Pagico is multilingual

Pagico is multilingual

Selecting your language

The first thing you see after launching Pagico, would be the language selection screen. Pick your favorite language, and hit “OK” button to continue.

Note

This help site is built based on Pagico in English. So if you’re using a different language, then you probably might see slightly different words and phrases in the software.

You can also change the language setting later in the “Preferences” panel.

Activating your Pagico Read More »

Starting a new database

What is a database?

A database can be considered as the container of your data. Once created, your information will be stored in the database, which can be carried around for portability need (use the same database on multiple computers), or backup need (back up the database regularly by storing a copy of it somewhere else).

Start a new database

Create a new database in the Welcome screen

In the welcome screen after your first launch (you may need to activate the program first), you should see a button called “Create New”. Click on that, Pagico will ask you where you would like to save the database.

Tips & Hints

You can create multiple databases for different purposes. Such as one for your work, and one for your life.

Make sure you have read AND write permission to the place where you want to store your database.

Always try to place your databases on a high speed storage, such as hard drive.

Note
Pagico 4 utilizes a new data engine. Therefore, databases created by Pagico v3.x will need to be upgraded before being used in Pagico 4. The data conversion can not be rolled back.
You can learn more about the data conversion.

Adding content to the database

As Pagico mainly manages three types of content: Random Notes, General Information and Contacts, so you have three choices of where new information are stored: Inbox, Projects or Contact Profiles.

For random, short-term notes and tasks, you can put them into the Inbox.

For information regarding to a person / organization, such as contact-specific tasks, meeting notes, file attachments, or even email messages, you need to create a contact profile, and throw stuff in it.

For projects, events and everything else, such as tasks regarding to a project or an event, all sorts of plans, meeting notes, file attachments, assignments, or even personal diaries, you need to create a project for the project or event, and add stuff in it.

Using the QuickAccess sidebar for quick access

The QuickAccess Sidebar

The QuickAccess Sidebar

You know, it’s very easy to have hundreds of topics in your database as time passes. However, your constantly used topics / contact profiles might be just a few. Adding these items into the “QuickAccess” sidebar will save you tons of time looking for them.

As of Pagico 3.2, you can add both topics and contact profiles into the QuickAccess bar.

In any topic, scroll to the bottom until you see a series of links. Click on the corresponding link to put that topic into the QuickAccess sidebar.

In contact profiles, the link to put / remove that profile into / from the QuickAccess sidebar is located in the right upper corner, right next to the “trash” icon.

Tips & Hints

Items in QuickAccess sidebar can be re-ordered, by dragging the icons with your mouse.

Like other sidebar sections, the QuickAccess sidebar can be folded and expanded. If you can’t see your items in the QuickAccess sidebar, try to expand it by clicking the little black arrow.

An easier way to remove an item from the QuickAccess sidebar, is to hover the mouse onto the item, and click on the “X” icon. The item is removed from the sidebar, but is not deleted from the database.

Searching in your database

It searches as you type.

To search for something, just click in the search box located at the upper left corner of Pagico window. Pagico does the search instantly as you type out the criteria. So most of the time you’ll get what you need before typing out the whole word.

Search results will be listed as groups, based on their types.

In addition to the groups, you can also observe lots of information just based on the search results, such as gender of a contact, status of a task, or the color of a QuickNote.

Tips & Hints

A task item listed in red indicates it’s overdue.

The contact info listed under a contact in the search result, is the one that matches your search criteria.

New in Pagico 4

The features described below are available in Pagico v4.0 or higher.

Full-text search

Starting from Pagico v4.0, the search engine now performs full-text search on notes and list items.

Copy data by drag and drop

You can insert (duplicate) the data objects (notes, list items, lists, and files) in the search result into the current topic or contact profile, by dragging the icon of the search result item and dropping it onto the topic or contact profile content area.

Link to topics or profiles by drag and drop

You can create links to other topics or profiles by dragging the icon of the topic or profile item from the search result, and dropping the search result item onto the current topic or contact profile content area.

The linked items are listed in the footnote section.

Locking the database

Database lock provides you a password protection for your database upon opening.

Setting the password

Before you can lock your database, you need to set a password for the lock. In order to do it, please follow these steps:

Database-Specific Preferences

Database-Specific Preferences

  1. Click on the “Preferences” icon in the toolbar.
  2. In the sidebar, click on the other preference item (with your database name as its caption) which is the section for database-specific options.
  3. In the password protection section, write your password twice in the two password boxes, and hit “enter” when you’re done.

Make sure you entered exactly the same password in the two input boxes.

Locking the database

To lock the database, simply click the “Lock” icon in the toolbar.

Canceling the password protection

If you wish to clear the password protection of your database, follow the first two steps above, and empty the two password boxes in the password protection section, then hit “enter” to confirm.

You’ll then see a textbox indicating the password protection has been cancelled.

Implementing GTD in Pagico

GTD stands for Getting Things Done, the famous organizational method by David Allen. It is so popular that tons of GTD-compatible information organizer apps emerged so people could easily implement the method on computers. Since Pagico is an information organizer too, we’d like to go over some basics regarding to how you can implement GTD in Pagico. Read More »

Upgrading to Pagico 4

Upgrading to Pagico 4 is very simple. Simply download the installer package of the latest version, and install it. The system requirements have not changed since Pagico v3.x.

Once it’s installed, you will be able to create and use Pagico 4 databases.

 

Upgrading your existing v3.x databases

Notes

Pagico 4 utilizes a whole new data engine that provides excellent performance and stability. Therefore, a data conversion is needed if you want to use your existing databases.

The data conversion can not be rolled back. So, before upgrading, please backup your original databases (by simply duplicating them).

  1. Open one of your existing databases in Pagico 4.
  2. When prompted, proceed with the data conversion by clicking the “Continue” button.
  3. Pagico 4 will convert the data. If success, it will load it automatically after the conversion.
  4. Repeat the step 1 to 3 for all your Pagico v3.x databases.

What if something went wrong?

Although the data conversion has been tested millions of times, there is still a chance that something might go wrong (i.e. power goes off during the conversion, etc). So, backing up your original database prior to the conversion is very important.

If you can’t get your database converted after several attempts, you may send the database upgrade log to our technical support.

On Mac systems, the log file for the database upgrade can be found at: ~/Library/Logs/Pagico/dbUpgrade

Setting up program preferences

To set up program and database preferences, please click on the “Wheel” icon in the toolbar, which can be located on top of your Pagico window.

Once switched to the preference panel, from the left sidebar you can see there are actually two separate preference panels:

  • Basic
    Program-wise settings, including interface language, time zone, date format, and MobileNote service, etc.
  • YourDatabase.pgco
    This item is named after your database, which is the database-specific settings, including password for the database, shortcut settings, and TagExplore browser settings, etc.

In either section, all the changes are saved automatically. And that’s why there isn’t a “Save” button.

Read More »