WinCal - User Guide and FAQ

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1. I was trying WinCal the other night, after entering the details in the New Calendar Wizard, it showed me the generated calendar with my photograph and calendar months on it. I got a little confused as to what should I do after this ? Please explain?

WinCal Team: For a beginner, the Process of Calendar design in WinCal is as follows:
Use the New Calendar Wizard, pick a template you like, Click Finish. A calendar based on template will be generated for you. Double click on each of the images used, specify your image. Double Click on the Calendar Objects and Choose the month and year you want to have for these. Your new Calendar is built. If you do not like templates to make your calendar you can use New Calendar Page Wizard as described in next few points.
Use the New Calendar Page Wizard to enter the basic parameters for your calendar. These are the Image (Photo) to use. Number of Months, starting month, and year, background etc.
Click on Finish, the Wizard will generate the calendar with one page for you.
Both the Wizards (New Calendar and New Calendar Page) take you to the Design Mode after generating calendar/calendar page, where you can further customize the calendar or leave it as it is. Design mode of WinCal is the Power of WinCal where you can customize your calendar easily by setting/changing simple options.
After your customization, you can press the Preview button to see how the calendar will be printed.
Press Print button to print it.
You can also refer to Chapter 4 - Editing of the online help to learn all the editing features of WinCal.

2. I have an older version of WinCal how do I upgrade?

WinCal Team: Upgrading WinCal is really very simple, first, UnInstall existing copy (see readme.txt that comes with software on how to do uninstall).Install the new version (reboot may be required after installing the new version).

3. I am a professional photographer, I extend my services to maternity hospitals and photograph newborn babies. I want to be able to change the calendar settings as per my country and be able to quickly make calendars with the newborn babies photograph in them, have calendar specific to my country. Is there a way to do this?

WinCal Team: Yes, you can make a few calendars with different designs, change the calendar properties as per your country's requirements, save and print them. Use these calendar printouts to show them to parents of newborn babies while taking the order. To deliver the Calendars ordered, use these saved Calendar designs as templates to make new one, i.e., open them using File-Open menu, double click on the photograph and change the properties to replace the photograph with a new one, then use File Save As menu option to save the calendar with new name. In most situations you are likely not to change the calendar object at all, as you have already made all those changes while making the templates. This will save you considerable time and effort and achieve your purpose of making Calendars with ease. In Version 4.0, we have added the feature to save your default calendar settings, it is available only if you are a registered user of WinCal (you have paid the license fees). Now you can even use the wizard to generate a 12 page 12 month calendar in 5 minutes.

4. Is it possible to make large size calendars using WinCal?

WinCal Team: Yes, as long as you have the hardware to print those sizes. The maximum size of the page WinCal allows is limited by the maximum allowed by your printing printing device. Please refer to chapter 20 of the user documentation for details. If you have a printer that is capable of printing photo-quality A3 pages, you can design A3 sized Calendars in WinCal.

5. I want to save the Image of the Calendar page I designed and save it to e-mail to my family, is it possible with this product?

WinCal Team: Yes, with Version 4.4 the Image quality has been fixed for the drafts, but you need to be registered user for it to be enabled. You can send the images saved at 300 DPI to anyone you like.

6. For some unknown reason (may be a virus) I am not able to open and read the on-line compiled HTML help file that comes with the package, what can I do?

WinCal Team: First get a good Internet Firewall and Virus Scanner, scan your computer for viruses and any unauthorized remote connections. If it still does not work, you can use the PDF version of the same document which is now available from: www.techsysconsultants.com.au/wincal480.pdf and use this instead, contents of two are same.

7. I have a large format printer which is capable of printing A2, A3 and A3+ size pages. But when I use WinCal to print using the supplied templates, the images appear to have low resolution (pixelated). What is the best way to print on these large format printers?

WinCal Team: You can use the templates for making/printing calendars of the same size i.e., if the template is designed for A4 size it SHOULD NOT be used to print on A3. If you do so, WinCal will scale the A4 sized template onto A3 which will result into pixelated appearance of Images on printouts. For best results you should start a fresh (design from a blank page of A3 size). If you do this images will not appear pixelated. Alternatively you should use the template that has the same paper size defined when it was made.
When you use a A4/Letter sized template and your printer setup is defined as ready to print on a A3 page scaling will happen. Version 4.5 has some large format templates either use them or you can design your own easily using the existing templates. If you copy and paste all the calendar objects and put in your image using the Image tool the resulting printout will be fine.
On the other hand if you use a A3 template to make a calendar and print it on a A4 page you will not see any problem with the image.
Ideally you should only use the template which matches your paper size on which you are printing.

8. I only have a large format printer attached to my system. When I try to save the calendar page image, WinCal will not save the image and keeps complaining about the resolution being > 300. What can be done?

WinCal Team: Some large format printer have minimum resolution of 600 dpi, hence WinCal is not able to save the image. If your printer does not support 300 dpi, you can simply install another printer and use that while saving the image of the page. For example you can install HP 932C and choose that as the printer in the print-setup dialog of WinCal, choose printer properties and set its quality to Normal. Now Choose File Save Calendar Page Image as...and save the page image. The resulting image will be 300 dpi.

9. Does WinCal work on MAC?

WinCal Team: No, Only Microsoft windows operating systems - Windows XP-Home, Windows XP-Professional, Windows 2000, Windows ME and Windows 98 are supported and software runs only on these platforms.

10. How can I make a Calendar in my language?

WinCal Team: Use WinCal Version 4.6 (4.5), With Version 4.5 it is possible to make calendars in your Language of Choice. Please see samples gallery for some examples of Calendars made using this version for different languages.

11. I am using Version 4.5 and when I use any of the supplied templates the Calendar is drawn by WinCal with all the days showing correctly in my language, However the Month Name is still in English Why ?

WinCal Team: When the template is translated to your language, the month name is not reset intentionally by WinCal as WinCal has a feature which lets you overwrite the generated month name. For the Month Name to be reset, you can either double click on the month invoking its properties and then choose a different month, when you click on Ok, the Month Name will be shown correctly in your language.

12. I am trying WinCal 4.6 and my Windows language is (e.g. English), different to one I want to make Calendar in - (e.g. French), How can this be done ?

WinCal Team: Simply invoke the Control Panel Regional and Language Options of Windows and Change the Language to the one you want to make Calendars in (French in this example). You may need to restart WinCal to pick up change in language.

13. I have already created lots of templates using version 4.5.0? Will I loose them if I upgrade to new version 4.6.0? Can my templates be upgraded ? Is so, how?

WinCal Team: Even when you have a Version 4.5.0 or templates made using version 4.3.0, all can be easily upgraded, the new version 4.6.0 silently upgrades all your templates and Calendars as you open them (Supported back versions up to 4.3.0 only), What this means is you can upgrade without any worry to the new version. The way to upgrade your template is also very simple:

1. Start WinCal, from the new calendar wizard select the template you want to upgrade (at this point the File Selection dialog will not show any preview of earlier version templates). After selecting the template click on Finish to generate a calendar using this template.
2. Update the Images in the template with the ones you want WinCal to Show in Preview for this template.
3. Select File Save as design template....and you are done. The template is upgraded to version 4.6.0. Now whenever you click on the this template in the file browser, it will show the preview as the first page was when template was saved.
You can use the same method to upgrade your saved Calendars, Until you upgrade the templates and calendars this version will not show a preview of them in the file selection dialogs.

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