Updating reminders and lists

Hi,

I'm just a fellow Sandy user, not a member of her development team, but they do seem busy at the moment, so I thought I would point you to this help section on her site: http://iwantsandy.com/help/lists...and I'll also summarize what I think will work.:-)

In that help document, check under the bolded blue section title, "Changing lists". I think what you both may be missing is that you're trying to refer to your item (in jtrichard's example, a list called "groceries") by its actual title as you think of it. Unfortunately (and a little awkwardly for human-style thinking), Sandy can't parse that way from our emails, because she only knows how to refer to an item by the number she has assigned it.

Thus, you have to find out what the item's Sandy-number is. So email her to lookup the item first. That is, send her this: "lookup groceries".

When she emails you back, you should see your list called "groceries" within the itemization she has sent in response (but that itemization will also include any other items that have the string "groceries" within their titles). Reply directly to this email from her, refer to your intended list solely by its Sandy-number from this itemization, and she should understand you just fine!

FYI: I seem to have the best luck with getting her to update list items when I put my addition or deletion on the line that immediately follows the item identification syntax. I don't know that doing so is a must anymore, but for example, if the list called "groceries" is #2 on the itemized listing of results that Sandy returned in response to your "lookup" email, then I know it will work to send...

update #2
* fish

Hope that helps! Good luck.

Lista,

Thanks for the reply. I followed your directions, and voila, my list was updated.

I guess what's frustrating about this is that I would like to simply be able to send an email with the "update (list name)" and then the items to update, vs. having to reply to a lookup.

Guess this statement is now clear from the link you referenced - "To add something to a list Sandy's already keeping for you, you can either start with a copy she's already sent you by email or you can ask her to look it up for you". There is simply no way to do this from scratch. Unfortunate. Sandy loses points.

--Joey

Thanks for the response, Lista! That definitely works and now I understand why it wasn't working for me.

I would agree with Joey that this makes it a little more cumbersome to update a list, but I expect there's some good reason in Sandy's brain why it must be this way for now.

I would suggest to Sandy's developers that they add something to the examples that says you need to retrieve the list number first before sending an update. I must have read through that example about 5 times trying to figure out how to make it work before resorting to GetSatisfaction.com. It's not clear from the examples that you need that step.

Thanks again,
JT

Joey and JT,

You gentlemen are quite welcome.:-) Glad you were both able to get it to work. I do agree that Sandy's friendly interface has a few nonintuitive stumbling blocks, like this one! On the other hand, using her as a hub for my own organizational system has been of such benefit to me overall (not to mention been kinda fun) that I'm delighted to be able to give back when time permits, such as with those drive-by assist posts!

Don't know if either one of you has signed up for Jott yet---Jotting to Sandy is very effective and a substantial plus for her usability. I'll admit that I do also use Jott's simple function "Jott to Self" to collect things in my email inbox that I need to add to my Sandy-kept lists. Precisely because adjusting my lists with her generally requires a lookup first, collecting individual entries in my email means I can upload/delete a small batch of items with her each time.

Tip: here's a trick using Jott to bridge some more of the gap between your newest list-bound items and your Sandy lists. When you know you're going to need to modify a list with her soon, add one more Jott, directly to Sandy, to have her get the relevant list ready for you. For example, Jott "lookup groceries". Then you've jump-started the process: by the time you're back at your email, Sandy's presumably returned (among other "groceries" results) the list in question and is ready for you to reply to it with your revisions. Gets things that much closer to being automagical.;-)