On my calendar

Forgive me if I miss an appointment. Last Saturday the calendar program on my computer crashed.

Three years ago when I got this computer I was pulling stuff out of obsolete programs. I chose some programs based on whether there was a migration path from the old computer into these new programs. That resulted in one email program for email and another email program for the calendar. That second one is eM Client.

I had been hearing about the next solar eclipse, the one in 2024, and wondered what day of the week that would be. So in eM Client I used the search function to find that date. The search function came up empty because there was no event on that date. Well, OK. I turned to Google, who had my answer promptly.

But in eM Client when I left the search panel to go back to the calendar it crashed. I restarted. The program verified the database, the main display came up, and I clicked on the calendar and it crashed – “eM Client has stopped working.” I tried reinstalling. That didn’t help.

I went to the program’s Customer Support Forum and wrote up a description of the problem. Since it was Saturday of Labor Day weekend I didn’t expect any response until Tuesday. Surprisingly, I did get a response on Monday. Their solution: rename the folder with the eM Client data so that it opens a fresh database. I said that was unacceptable because it had none of my calendar appointments.

The next reply suggested before I go into the calendar I export all the events. That crashed.

I did a backup in May, so I copied out the calendar database. This time eM Client opened the calendar.

I posted to the forum again listing the deficiencies of the calendar feature, such as no handling of errors when a problem is encountered. I’d rather have 99.9% of my calendar than nothing. I also asked if they had an extra program I could use to extract events from the damaged database. No reply.

I opened the database in a text program. I could read the name of each event, but not the date. Even so, I have a pretty good list of the appointments and events that aren’t in the May backup file. I know I have a dentist appointment before the end of the year, but no idea of which day.

The lack of response on the forum prompted me to think it was time to choose another calendar program. So I exported from the May database. It crashed.

So, perhaps, eM Client is usable as long as I never export from it. I don’t like that option, especially for a program that now has a record of crashing. Time for another calendar program.

I found an export file from about 18 months ago. I don’t remember why I created it. I also have databases from other backups. I may not have to recreate too much. Even so, I’ll have to call the dentist.