# Creating reminders directly from web pages or other text

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-reminders-directly-from-web-pages-or-other-text/466541>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [October 5, 2008, 11:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-reminders-directly-from-web-pages-or-other-text/466541 "2008-10-05T11:21:58Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Ximenean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/aca169/32.png) [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)\
**Post date:** [October 5, 2008, 11:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-reminders-directly-from-web-pages-or-other-text/466541/1 "2008-10-05T11:21:58Z")

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Is there software that can do the following?

Say I’m browsing some TV listings on a web page. I want to be able to highlight some text, and then extract any times and/or dates in it and create a reminder for that event. The software would pop up a dialog that would allow me to adjust or add any dates that it got wrong or missed, and would allow me to modify the rest of the reminder text. Then it would schedule the reminder to appear at some configurable time(s) before the event.

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**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\
**Post date:** [October 5, 2008, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-reminders-directly-from-web-pages-or-other-text/466541/2 "2008-10-05T12:28:54Z")

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I don’t think you can do that very easily, as the delimiters and the organisation of the information you highlight will not be consistent enough to distinguish them.

[Here’s](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1191) what looks like a cool Firefox plugin, though.

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**Author:** ![Ximenean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/aca169/32.png) [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)\
**Post date:** [October 5, 2008, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-reminders-directly-from-web-pages-or-other-text/466541/3 "2008-10-05T12:39:26Z")

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I have seen code libraries in Perl and other languages that do a reasonable job of teasing dates and times out of arbitrary text. Or the web application Zimbra, where you can create calendar entries by highlighting text in emails such as “tomorrow, 3:45”. I was kind of hoping somebody would have done the work for me and used such a library to build the sort of utility I described.

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**Author:** ![Borderline\_Blonde](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/borderline_blonde/32/6479_2.png) [@Borderline\_Blonde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Borderline_Blonde)\
**Post date:** [October 5, 2008, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creating-reminders-directly-from-web-pages-or-other-text/466541/4 "2008-10-05T18:17:14Z")

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Not sure if this is what you’re looking for, but I love it. I can copy and paste any text into it and add it as a reminder, note, or idea. It offers a free 30 day trial period. Might be worth a look.  
[http://www.cutereminder.com/](http://www.cutereminder.com/)