Thursday, December 01, 2005

Treo 650 dialling from calendar

I have a lot of phone numbers attached to calendar entries, in the notes field. They're usually for conference calls and the like.

On my old Treo 600, I could simply cut the numbers, then paste them into the phone app, then dial. Easy, if a little awkward.

My Orange Treo 650 has a special 'homepage' application that acts as the default app when you press the green phone button. This app links to other apps, including dial pad. And worst of all, it doesn't let you paste numbers onto it; you must do that from the dial pad. And to get to dial pad, you need to navigate to it (about 4 key presses).

FieldPlus (just google for it) is a great, free application that solves this. Install it, and it'll add a new Preferences item for FieldPlus. Open that, and there's a pull down to select specific functionality. The important one is 'Center Action', choose "centre button does = 'single action'" and "single action = 'use selection'". Done.

Now, to dial from calendar, highlight the number (a double click), press shift, then press centre button. Treo dials the number. Lovely.

This also works in other apps, the prefs allow you to prevent this behaviour as you wish. FieldPlus also lets you do clever things with text selection, but i've never had problems with that, so don't use it.

One annoyance - in the call log, instead of the number being shown, it just says "Dial Number". Not such a great hassle compared to the hassle it saves.

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