Lotus Organizer is a discontinued

personal information manager A personal information manager (often referred to as a PIM tool or, more simply, a PIM) is a type of application software that functions as a personal organizer. The acronym PIM is now, more commonly, used in reference to personal information manag ...

(PIM). It was initially developed by Threadz, a small

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

software house, reaching version 3.0. Organizer was subsequently acquired by

Lotus Development Corporation Lotus Software (called Lotus Development Corporation before its acquisition by IBM) was an American software company based in Massachusetts; it was "offloaded" to India's HCL Technologies in 2018. Lotus is most commonly known for the Lotus 1- ...

, for whom the package was a

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for se ...

-based replacement for

Lotus Agenda Agenda is a DOS-based personal information manager, designed by Mitch Kapor, Ed Belove and Jerry Kaplan, and marketed by Lotus Software. Lotus Agenda is a "free-form" information manager: the information need not be structured at all before it ...

. For several years it was the unquestioned market leader until it was gradually overtaken by

Microsoft Outlook Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager software system from Microsoft, available as a part of the Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365 software suites. Though primarily an email client, Outlook also includes such functions as Calen ...

. Organizer is notable for using the ″leather-bound personal organizer″ graphical metaphor for its

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...

. It is often bundled within

Lotus SmartSuite Lotus may refer to: Plants *Lotus (plant), various botanical taxa commonly known as lotus, particularly: ** ''Lotus'' (genus), a genus of terrestrial plants in the family Fabaceae **Lotus flower, a symbolically important aquatic Asian plant also ...

Status

On 14 May 2013, IBM announced the immediate "withdrawal and discontinuance of support" of Lotus SmartSuite, Lotus Organizer and Lotus 123. Version 6.1 was the last version. It supported

Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was released to manufacturing on December 15, 1999, and was offici ...

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was release to manufacturing, released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Wind ...

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...

, and

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on ...

Versions

Microsoft Windows

Organizer was a part of Lotus SmartSuite, but was also sold as a single application. The latest releases of SmartSuite did not include the current version of Organizer; it was sold separately only. Versions up to 2 were 16-bit programs. Later versions are 32-bit programs.

IBM OS/2

The first OS/2 version was released in 1998. Until then, the Windows 16-bit version had been used. The last version is 1.7 from 2001. Later revisions of SmartSuite did not upgrade Organizer, although some fixes have been made. Organizer for OS/2 uses the .or4 file format. This means that it cannot exchange data files with the later Windows versions, other than by importing and exporting data. The features and user interface for Organizer for OS/2 are similar to that of Organizer 97 for Windows. It lacks later improvements, such as importing and exporting

vCard vCard, also known as VCF (Virtual Contact File), is a file format standard for electronic business cards. vCards can be attached to e-mail messages, sent via Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), on the World Wide Web, instant messaging, NFC ...

and

iCalendar The Internet Calendaring and Scheduling Core Object Specification (iCalendar) is a media type which allows users to store and exchange calendaring and scheduling information such as events, to-dos, journal entries, and free/busy information, a ...

files, and synchronisation with PDAs.

References

Threadz Organizer 3.0 review
by Newsbytes from June 5, 1992. Accessed 2006-08-08.

by Jack Schofield of

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...

, January 10, 2002. Accessed 2006-08-08.
IBM FAQ Technote
last modified January 1, 2010. Accessed 2012-05-15.

External links