It's fast and easy to plan any project.

Project KickStart's 8-step "planning icons" guide you to:

• Define project phases
• Establish tasks
• Clarify your goals
• Import ACT! Contacts and Users and assign tasks to them
• Anticipate obstacles
• Schedule tasks (with built-in Gantt chart)
• Print reports and send data to other programs
• When you're done, with one click, your plan transfers to all versions of ACT!

Schedule your plan with our Gantt chart

Project KickStart's easy-to-use Gantt chart provides a timeline for each task in your schedule.  You can even "bump" tasks forward or backward to adjust the schedule. Mark tasks "done" for a quick status report.

Print reports, including the Gantt chart, and share them with team members, management, clients and other stakeholders.  Include Project KickStart reports in budgets and proposals. Or, save as HTML and post to your Web site.

When you're done, you can instantly transfer your plan to ACT!

With a click of the mouse, you'll find your project's tasks, due dates and assignments in three places in ACT!.

• Groups shows tasks in each project separately.
• Task List shows tasks from multiple projects, sorted by date.
• Calendar also shows tasks from multiple projects sorted by date.

The link from Project KickStart to ACT! 2005/2006 is a "smart" link. If you bring in the same project again, the program will ask you if you want to update the information about the tasks already in. It will update done status, dates, assignments. And, best of all, you won't lose your history working on the project in ACT! 2005/2006.

The Calendar display in ACT! 2005/2006 is also significantly improved. Tasks are brought in as timeless, taking up less space in the ACT! Calendar and letting users do their project work and their other work more easily.

Once you export the tasks you have assigned in Project KickStart into your ACT!' database, they turn into ACT!' activities. Since you have the option to take advantage of the assignment of roles or certain tasks to either users or contacts in the ACT! database, you can then manage the activities from within ACT!

You can use ACT! to:

• View multi projects during the same time frame
• Set reminders for tasks
• View tasks during specified date ranges
• Notify Contacts when tasks are due, schedule planning meetings, etc.
• Bring tasks over to your Palm Pilot with ACT! Link.

Project KickStart makes it easy to:

• Win proposals - Create well-thought-out task lists and include them in your proposals.
• Plan product launches, events, marketing programs.
• Develop new business and sales campaigns.
• Create to-do lists, schedules for events, etc.
• Analyze business processes and create process templates for others to use.

Import Contacts and Users from ACT!

Project KickStart imports ACT! Contacts and Users (to use as resources.) You don't have to retype the names of people who will be involved with your project. And when you export your tasks, ACT! will recognize who the Contacts and Users are!

Integration with Microsoft Office: Project KickStart seamlessly integrates with Microsoft Outlook, Project, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. This enhances the usability of these popular applications and helps you communicate your plan to everyone on your project team.

• Windows 98 / Me / NT / 2000 / XP
• 32 MB RAM; 10 MB free disk space 
• ACT! Compatibility: ACT! 6.X, and 2005/2006.

ACT! 6 Tip

How do I create a lookup of contacts based on the activities that I have scheduled with them?
Follow these steps:
1) Choose the View Menu, and click Task List. The Task List view appears.

2) Choose the View Menu, and click Filter Task List. The Filter Activities dialog box appears.

3) Set the filters to display the activities you want to view. You can filter on date, type, priority, and more to get just the activities you want to see.

4)Then right-click in the window, and on the shortcut menu click Create Lookup. ACT! creates a lookup based on the contacts listed in the Task List view and returns to the Contacts view.

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ACT! 7 Tip

How to add your own document templates to the Write Menu

Once your custom document template has been created, follow the steps below to add this item to the Write menu:

1. Click the Tools menu, point to Customize, and then click Menus and Toolbars. The Customize Menus and Toolbars dialog box appears.

2. Under the Custom Commands tab, click the New button. Enter a Command name and (optional) Tooltip text, and then click the Browse button. An Open dialog box appears.
   Change the Files of type to All files (*.*), navigate to and Open the file that you wish to add to your menu. The Customize Menus and Toolbars dialog box reappears with the file path to the selected file displayed in the Command line field (as illustrated above).

3. Click the Icon button (if desired) to change the icon associated with this custom command.
   Click the Add Command button. Your Command name and Tooltip text appear in the main window (as illustrated above).

4. Click the Commands tab. From the list of Categories, click the Custom Commands item. Your custom command appears in the Commands pane.

5. Click and drag your custom command to the desired menu. The menu will expand as you drag over it allowing you to drop your custom item into the desired location on the menu.

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Word Tip

Removing formatting for a portion of text

To quickly remove character formatting, such as bold, italic, or underline, and reset text back to the normal style, select the text and press Ctrl+Spacebar (Ctrl+Shift+Z also works). To reset paragraph formatting, such as tabs and indents, back to the normal style press Ctrl+Q.
 

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Excel Tip

Viewing Formulas

Instead of going to the Tools menu, Options... menuitem, View tab, then checking Formulas, to take a look at all your formulas at once, try Ctrl+` (apostrophe -- the key shared with a tilde ~ to the left of the number 1 on your keyboard).

Also, save yourself the trouble of repeating all the steps to get back to a normal view -- just repeat the same shortcut key combination.
 

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