Unable To Edit Calendar After Timeline Additions

I really like how flexible the Aeon Timeline calendar is…until you start adding events.

While I understand that it sounds good to lock down the calendar settings – number, order, and length of eras, for example – it’s simultaneously infuriating.

In my fantasy series I have 5 eras. I’ve already added them all in to Aeon Timeline with the proper names, order, and lengths. However, given the size of the series I’m writing I’m almost certain that minor changes will be required down the road. Maybe I’ll do away with an era to merge it with a previous era. Or maybe I’ll insert a new era where one didn’t previously exist. More likely I’ll just want to adjust the number of years a specific era lasts.

The problem is that as soon as I start adding anything to the timeline I lose this ability completely. And by the time I may have to make a change I will have hundreds of entries in place.

Since the calendar is mostly locked down after timeline events are added this puts me in a difficult position. I don’t want to have to remove hundreds of entries only to re-add them after altering an era, but I don’t want to work with an established timeline that the story’s development has rendered outdated.

Of course I realize that adjusting the timeline after adding items may be tricky…but then, that’s the whole point of this application, isn’t it? You can adjust individual entries, date spans, blocked by/blocking values, etc…, so why create such an obvious limitation in terms of adjusting the calendar properties themselves?

Just my thoughts.

-Bob

PS: The only way I can reliably get around the problem as-is is to create just a single era in which to put my entire story, and then add custom events named ‘Eras’ (or ages or whatever) to the timeline, under which all my individual events take place. That’s my goal, but it feels like I’m working around the app rather than working with it when I do this. So yes, easy to deal with, but I think it makes the whole process somewhat cumbersome.

It is due to the complexity of the issue that we don’t allow altering the calendar after events have been added. Mainly deciding how to alter an event’s dates when the calendar changes, as there could be many different options that would be equally valid.
It is something we are aware of however, so it is something we potentially may look at in the future, possibly also adding the ability to alter parts of the calendar in certain circumstances if it makes the problem simpler.

Sounds good. I’ve spent the last few days knocking away at this issue and – as I suspected – creating custom events named ‘Ages’ and sticking everything inside those seems to be the best approach. The only real headache is calculating the timeline dates against the custom era dates and keeping things consistent, but at least the app gives me the ability to create custom fields in the spreadsheet view which – while time-consuming to figure out – gives me the side-by-side comparisons I’m looking for.

Thanks,
Bob

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Just as a note for someone who doesn’t have many entries yet, I was able to edit the calendar by selecting all the events and the characters > Right click > Dates > Remove dates.

As I said I didn’t have many entries so typing the dates again is not so time-consuming, but I understand your concern since your case is more complex

Would it help to export the timeline to CSV, adjust the dates with spreadsheet formulas, start with an empty Aeon timeline and the calendar you want, and import your adjusted CSV file?

The combination of Aeon and a spreadsheet opens up some possibilities.

This should work, yes.
I don’t know if it’s more convenient to delete the events in your actual project rather than start with a blank one just in case you have custom types/settings and you don’t want to copy them by hand (you could always export a template and import the CSV on a new project built on that template).