How do I set my watch after a battery change?
A fresh battery is only half the job — the order of what you do next matters, and skipping the first step is why so many "new battery, dead watch" panics happen.
Step 1 — Reset the module (Casio: the AC contact). After power is cut and restored, many modules wake up blank or showing garbage segments. On nearly every Casio there's a contact labeled AC next to the battery: short it to the battery's top surface for two or three seconds with tweezers, and the display snaps back to defaults. Full walkthrough in the AC reset guide. If your watch woke up normally, skip this.
Step 2 — Everything is now at factory defaults. Expect 12:00 or 1/1 flashing, alarm off, and on some modules the hourly chime turned ON (you'll notice at the top of the hour — the toggle is usually holding or pressing the bottom-right button in the alarm screen).
Step 3 — Set the time and date. Hold the top-left button until the display flashes, cycle fields with bottom-left, advance values with bottom-right. The full sequence with the classic layout is in the 4-button setting guide. Set the date correctly and the day of the week follows automatically.
Step 4 — Check the small stuff. 12/24H format, and whether the alarm you didn't want got enabled during button-mashing.
Worth doing while the case is open in your memory: note today's date somewhere as the battery change date. Battery life claims like "7 years" only mean something if you know when the clock started — which is exactly the kind of thing that's forgotten by the time it matters.
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