Connect Your ACT! Contact to their Associated Documents and Folders!

Rid yourself of Unnecessary Paper and have Immediate Access to client/customer files from within the

ACT! interface.

ACT! allows you to “attached” files to your contact. Normally, you will have to scan the document, name the document, save the document and then go into ACT! and attach the document to the contact. Obviously this is very inefficient.

In ACT! 5.0 or 6.0 these ACT! attachments, are recorded as “links” or “shortcuts” to the document on your computer or network. If the attached file is moved or renamed, the link will no longer work. Also, files are attached into the Notes/History tab in ACT! and often crowd out the important notes and histories.

In ACT! 2005 (Version 7.0) ACT! “copies” the attached file into a folder where the supplemental database files are located. This means the original file stays on your system in it original location but the file that is accessed within ACT! 2005 is a copy. This could lead to an incorrect version of the file being used since ACT! will create a separate file each time a file is attached.

With Scan and Organize for ACT!, you can Scan and Manage Documents from within the ACT! interface!

• Scan the document directly to the contact’s folder on your computer or network.
• Automatically Open the associated contact’s folder inside of ACT! simply by looking up the contact!
• Create and Name Folders Automatically using data that exists in up to 3 ACT! fields OR assign the contact to a specific folder that is already on your computer or network!
• Perform file management functions from within ACT! such as copy, paste, rename, delete, Send to, etc.
• Scan documents as PDF, TIFF, JPG, BMP, PNG and even optional OCR Text.
• Automatically assign keywords to documents during scan.
• Burn folders to CDR/RW (Windows XP only).
• Save document keywords to a specific field in ACT! for easy searching.
• ACT! users that synchronize can now have access to documents on their VPN or any logic drive letter path.
• Optional OCR function allows automatic keyword population.
• Drag and Drop support from Windows Explorer, Paperport, etc.
• You already know how to use it!

ACT! 6 Tip

How to duplicate a contact that already exists in your database as a starting point for a new contact.
Follow these steps:
1)Launch ACT! and open your database.
2)Locate the contact record containing the information you wish to duplicate.
3)Click the Contact menu, and then click Duplicate Contact. The Duplicate Contact dialog appears.

4)Enable the appropriate duplicate data option, and then click OK.
5)Modify the new contact record as desired, and then save the contact by clicking the File menu, and then clicking Save.
6)The following fields are primary by default. The data in these fields will carry over to the new contact when you create a Duplicate data from primary fields:

• Company

• Address 1

• Address 2

• Address 3

• City

• State

• Zip

• Country

• Phone

• Fax
  
  You can make additional fields primary by modifying the field settings.

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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 (as illustrated above).

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Word Tip

View or Modify Formatting with the Task Pane

You can use the new Reveal Formatting task pane in Word to view a detailed description of any text in your document. You can also use it to modify or clear the formatting; compare the formatting of different selections, or to find blocks of text with similar formatting. Here's how to use it:

1. Select the text you want to examine or reformat.

2. From the Format menu, select Reveal Formatting.

3. Do any of the following:

   • To change any formatting properties, click one of the underlined commands from within the task pane, and then change any options you want in the dialog box that appears.

   • To determine the formatting source, such as whether the formatting comes from a style, select the Distinguish style source check box.

   • To show formatting marks, such as paragraph marks and tabs, select the Show all formatting marks check box.

   • To format a text selection like the text that surrounds it, select the text. In the Selected text box, click the arrow, and then click Apply Formatting of Surrounding Text.

   • To view a feature-by-feature comparison of your text selection with another block of text, select the Compare to another section check box and then select another block of text.

You can also open the Reveal Formatting task pane by choosing What's This? on the Help menu or selecting text within your document and pressing SHIFT+F1.

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Excel Tip

Entering Dates

To enter today's date in a cell of your Excel spreadsheet just hold the CTRL key and press ; to enter the time CTRL/SHIFT and press :

If you want the day's date to appear and change each time you open your spreadsheet, use the formula =now() formatting the cell to show a date. If you format the cell to show a time, it will show the time when the workbook was last opened.
 

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