KenK wrote:

I'm looking for something, preferably built into XP, that will remind
me of something at a specified time and date. I tried Google with no
success. I finally tried an app (Efficient Reminder) that had a free
version and said it worked with XP. I installed it and can't figure
out how to use it. I tried several times but was told that what I was
trying to do was not permitted (in free version?).

I looked at Gmail but it doesn't offer email delivery at a specific
time and date.

For reminders, you want to look at a calendaring solution, not an e-mail
function. However, it is a calendar function. Go into the calendar
(calendar.google.com), create an appointment, and click on More Options.
Your Gmail e-mail address should already be listed for where to send the
notification.

https://support.google.com/calendar/...DDesktop&hl=en

Looks like they haven't updated their article. I don't see the
notification options they mention when I am creating a new event. My
e-mail address is already listed, and I cannot edit it to point to a
different e-mail address. They mention editing an existing event, so I
created and saved a new event, and then edited the event. Nope, my
Gmail address was unalterable. You would have to test if creating a new
event in your Google Calendar has it send you an e-mail. Although I
have a Gmail account (mostly for my Android phone), I don't use much of
anything Google. Gmail is my backup e-mail account. Hotmail is my
primary e-mail, calendar, and contacts service.

Update: Ah, I was just about to leave Gmail, but noticed there is a
Notification drop-down when creating/editing an event. Click the
downward chevron, and the choices are E-mail or Notification.
Notification, as I recall, is just their web app making a sound and
maybe a popup when you are on their calendar web page. I think if you
use Google Chrome that you can also get the notification in that web
browser even when not on the calendar page. Select the e-mail option
to get an e-mailed reminder. You can even define multiple
notifications to occur at different times.

Alternatively, you can use Hotmail/Outlook.com's (aka Office's) calendar
service. Go to office.com, sign into your Microsoft account, and click
on Calendar in the top app-select row. If any of their web apps are not
listed that you want to use, click the "All apps" hyperlink. Create a
new event (or edit an existing one), select More, click the "Remind me"
link to show a drop-down menu of selections. The top bunch is for a web
app notification, like you're using their Outlook app on an Android
phone or using their Outlook desktop program (and you can use their
calendar using those clients instead of their web app). At the very
bottom of that list is "Add email reminder". In the popup dialog, add a
new reminder. Like with Google calendar, you can have multiple
reminders. Also like Google Calendar, you cannot specify to where the
e-mailed reminder goes, so it goes to your Hotmail/Outlook.com e-mail
account.

You can use their calendaring web app to send you reminders of events.
You could also use Microsoft's clients (Outlook for desktop or Android)
to manage your calendar locally while having it sync to your calendar up
in your online account. If you want a local-only solution, there are
note programs that have a reminder or alarm function. I use Stickies
(https://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/stickies/index.html). It has a
reminder featu the sticky note on the desktop will shake and/or make
a sound. It has an alarm featu a louder sound is made. You can set
the alarm/reminder to occur after so many minutes, hours, days, or
weeks. You can sleep (hide) the note until the alarm or reminder time,
so your desktop isn't cluttered with a bunch of notes whose purpose is
to just remind you of some event. While it comes, by default, with a
newer skin, I prefer their stickies9.ssk skin. You can download lots of
skins from their web site; however, some have less features than others.
For reminders that I don't care to store in my Hotmail or Gmail
calendars, I use Stickies.

Stickies is also quite handy for saving notes on the computer (but I
also use Microsoft's free OneNote, but that can be daunting to users
that don't use it much to learn it). To reduce the size of a sticky to
just its title, you can double-click on a sticky note's titlebar to roll
it up (just the title bar shows). I can have several notes with them
all rolled up together in a group with them abutting each other, and
double-click on the note that I want to read, and double-click again to
roll it back up. I can lock a note to prevent accidental editing
(rollup still works). There are probly lots of note apps with reminders
and/or alarms. I remember trying several, but stuck with Stickies.

The latest version of Stickies states it supports Windows 7, 8, and 10.
There is a link at their site to get older versions. I've been using
Stickes since when I used to use Windows XP, so the old version was very
close to the feature set of the newest version. Alas, the old version
download page doesn't say which versions of Windows are supported by
which old version of Stickies, so you'll have to walk down the old
versions to see which installer works on Windows XP.

You'll want to make sure Stickies is configured to load when you log
into your Windows account, so the reminder/alarm feature works in the
background.

I searched XP as best I could but couldn't find anything.

Sorry, I can't see what is so difficult about using Efficient Reminder.
Looks pretty straight forward, to me. From their screenshots at their
site, and by looking at Google Images, it seems a typical GUI of many
calendering (and even e-mail) programs. It's somewhat reminiscent of
the layout for the MS Outlook desktop program.

Many office suites do not come with an e-mail component. Even with MS
Office (the standalone desktop app version, not their Office.com web
apps) doesn't come with Outlook unless you get the correct edition. I
quit paying for Microsoft's Office 365 subscription-ware, and went to
the LibreOffice suite, but no e-mail, calendaring, or contact functions
there. For e-mail, calendaring, and contacts, I tried several clients.
There are lots of apps with a calendar function for the reminder feature
you're looking for (other than the aforementioned note apps with a
reminder or alarm feature).

EssentialPIM (essentialpim.com) is a PIM (Personal Information Manager)
with a GUI akin to Outlook. ePIM has the e-mail, calendar, to-do,
notes, and contacts features which, again, makes it look a lot like
Outlook (but has a free version and a much cheaper payware version than
the cost of Outlook). Alas, their latest version 9 does not list
support for Windows XP. You'd have to find an older version of ePIM.
Quite often you have to find and use old and unsupported software on an
old and unsupported OS. However, that probably means you can only use
the old free version since they likely will sell only the latest version
since that's what they support. I found a list of old versions of ePIM
at:

https://essentialpim.zendesk.com/hc/...older-versions

I looked in https://www.essentialpim.com/blog-an...ersion-history
to see if them mention if and when Windows XP support got dropped. All
I could find is version 5.53 had "improved UI handling in Mail module on
Win XP" for the latest comment about Windows XP.

https://www.essentialpim.com/help/fr...?new_topic.htm

That mentions Windows XP, but sometimes online documentation does not
get updated in a timely manner to reflect requirements for the latest
version. It's possible the latest ePIM runs on Windows XP, but that the
author won't support that configuration. Not supported doesn't
necessarily equate to won't work. After all, you're still using an OS
that isn't supported, either. I'm using an NNTP client (40tude Dialog)
that hasn't been supported since 2005, and you're using an NNTP client
that is over 18 years old.

Thunderbird lasted all of a 6-month trial before I finally got ****ed
off enough at it to dump it. Lots of users like it, though, and it has
a calender function, so it would alert you to an event that had a
reminder configured for it. Just make sure to load Tbird when you
login, so it can run in the background to send you those reminders.

em Client is a good candidate, and I used it for over a year. Unless
you pay for it, the only support you get is their web-based forum, and
there's really only 1 guy there that helps. None of their tech support
visit their forums. em Client has some bugs still, but the majority of
the program works fine. Mostly I hit GUI bugs, where I'd try to change
appearance or behavior but the setting wasn't effected or didn't survive
and exit and reload of em Client. The free version has a limit of 2
accounts; however, another bug is that it will let you define more than
2 accounts, but soon some begin to malfunction (won't poll the server
for new e-mails, or won't even connect to the server), and no way to fix
other than delete and recreate the account in em Client (and make sure
you stay under the 2-account limit for the free version). No way to
report the bug to their tech support since support isn't included in the
free version, and none of their techs visit their forums. They have a
comparison chart pitting em Client against other popular PIM clients,
and a comparison of their free vs paid versions, are at:

https://www.emclient.com/how-we-compare
https://www.emclient.com/pricing?lang=en

They even have an Android client, so you can use em Client on your
smartphone. I tried it, but quit when I found it had no sticky option
to load on Android startup; i.e., it doesn't get loaded until you load
it. On my phone, I use Microsoft's Outlook app, and their Word, Excel,
and PowerPoint apps (all are free but reduced feature sets compared to
the desktop versions, but likely more than sufficient features for most
users).

Alas, I'm having a damn tough time trying to find if em Client supports
Windows XP, or what operating systems and versions of them it supports.
I did find https://download.cnet.com/eM-Client/...-10813093.html
but that is for version 7. They're up to version 8 now. Their download
page (https://www.emclient.com/download) has a link to v7. I was close
to buying em Client to get the cloud sync features, and let me report
bugs, but I moved to Windows 10 where I found other built-in solutions.