Act! 2006

[Doug Walsh]

If your an ACT user, you need to load a free utility call Free XP RAM Pro. Do a google on that world and you'll see it as a free download. It helps greatly with the RAM issues and performance of ACT. It's a lifesaver.

 

[billjw]

A little left field ... perhaps

G'day gurus ...

I have tried Goldmine, Act! 6 and Act! 8, evaluated Maximiser and even salesforce.com.

Years ago I discovered Ecco Pro, used it for a long while and kept a copy in my bottom drawer as updating to Office 2003 (and Outlook) seemed just more practical.

I dug Ecco out the other day, installed it and imported all my contacts - effortlessly. Set up some project lists for a couple of my clients, utilised the inbuilt Gantt Charts and got down to business.

I think I'll stick with Ecco for a while now.

Act!6 promised a lot and does do things that Ecco can't (or I'm not aware of) and Act! 7 & 8 just use up all my resources, thus slowing me down.

In the end though, Ecco just works, configures very flexibly and keeps everything in order. Not bad for a program with no development for 7 + years. (And while it looks old, the lack of "glamour" helps with the speed issues).

Just a couple of cents worth.

Bill

 

[pattyf]

Looking for the Perfect System

Like a lot of you, I have also tried numerous systems, looking for the one that had everything I wanted. I never really liked Outlook, and after it crashed on me for the 3rd time in 6 months I gave up on it, but missed the GTD system that I had worked so hard to put together.

I tried a new program do-Organizer by GemX, but it was missing a lot of what I wanted and too much of what I didn't need. I also tried Ecco, but couldn't quite grasp how to use it. Franklin Planner for XP was cool for some things, but I used it mainly for the notes section as an outliner. Plus many others, some of which I paid for and others I just used the free trial.

Finally I sat down with my ACT program which I had only used for contacts before and discovered that I could really mesh my own GTD system in with it! I now use it for e-mail, contacts, calendar & tasks and Franklin Planner for an outliner, with a little bit of Evernote thrown in. I am finally at peace with my system and so happy to find that others use GTD with ACT! also.

 

[Deb Consultant]

ACT! 2006 and Ooutlook - history of "reply" email?

Hi all! We just converted a client from ACT!2000 to ACT! 2006. It definately is slow and has bugs. I am hitting one that is stumping tech support - maybe you guys can help: ACT! 2006 is working with Outlook 2000. When you are in ACT!2006 and hit the e-mail icon from the left side of the screen your e-mail opens. Go to your Inbox and choose an e-mail sent to you from a person who is a contact in ACT!. Send a REPLY. Now look for the history of that e-mail. MOST of the time (but not all!) the history falls into your "My Contact" history, when we really want it to show under the contact history. ACT! Support claims this is not a feature. However, I have seen it done once, but can't re-create it. Anyone have any answers? Thanks!

 

[pengrus]

I looked at upgrading and quickly decided against it. Now I use a great outlook add-in called Avidian Prophet, it is not ACT but it works great with Outlook and provides most of the functionality from ACT in addition if you are an Outlook user it does not make any changes to Outlook.

I recommend you contact Avidian and discuss with the sales rep how you are currently using ACT and they will explain in great detail how Avidan will adapt to your workflow. They are brutally honest about what the software does, and they offer full 30 day no question asked guarantee.

I have been using Avidian for 6 weeks now and am yet to find a single bug...a great improvement over ACT.

Here is a link
http://avidian.com/

Don't worry I have no relation to these guys just a happy customer as it meets my needs.

I tried out prophet from Avidian the past week. And I must say that I am very dissapointed with their product. Their sales reps who called me are very polite and professional, Chris, the best sales I ever dealt with. The follow up support is also second to none.

However, my problems with Prophet is:
1. My system is clean, new computer, new outlook with a couple of addins like skype and google desktop search. Prophet slows down the whole outlook 2003. After I decided to return the product for money back, I was told to upgrade to fix the speed issue.

2. After 3.0 upgrade, the speed is ok. So I thought it is usable given its great support and price. Not so. My outlook contacts won't work like normal. Whenever I made a chance to outlook, it won't change. And it kept asking me if I want to save the change.

Althought it sounded good, I have to return it. It might be simple, but it does not work well.

On the other hand, I heard ACT! is complex, and tried it before, this time, I downloaded ACT! 2006 and start liking it. The speed is very good. I only have 500 contacts. And its really powerful...

Thanks for all the information shared in this thread. I now learned what is GTD.

 

[smithdoug]

How about Business Contact Manager & Outlook?

Act has long been the tool of choice for sales people and my recollection is that it is very much oriented toward the sales process, from prospecting for leads up through the point where the customer makes a buy decision and the sale is closed. Ditto for Prophet.

Our customers have pretty well already decided to buy from us by the time they first approach us, so we need something to organize all of the communications, notes, etc. for each customer from that point on. I purchased Intuit’s Customer Manager for that purpose (since we were using their QuickBooks accounting software, and have since upgraded to Premier) but Customer Manager has always been painfully slow. Performance improved when I doubled RAM, but as the customer list as increased, performance has deteriorated. Which is a puzzle. The file size is only 24 MB and there are only 600 customers in it. [Admittedly, performance would improve if I didn’t have so much else running on the system. Outlook is always open and I typically also have QuickBooks Accounting, MindManager, Customer Manager and an illustration program (CorelDraw of Illustrator) open at the same time but I need all of them running to work on customer jobs and handle their inquiries when they call in.]

I wonder if Microsoft’s Business Customer Manager add-in for Outlook wouldn’t be a better alternative, allowing me to dump Customer Manager. Problem is, since the business is in its infancy, I would guess that the number of customers will grow to a couple thousand over the next several months and could easily reach 10,000 within a couple years. That seems like an awful lot to be carrying around in Outlook, but perhaps by then we could put all of that data on a server. Would that help? Or would I always have to carry a humongous file in Outlook? Don’t know.

 

[RichyYoung]

would anyone recommend any forums for advice on using act2006 other than paying for the tech support we are having trouble recording the fact that we have sent out a mailmerge, wed like to record that we have done it automatically, preferably in with the customers details and that way we can plan to follow up in 1 week with a call ? and also not send them multiple emails

 

[cbbond]

ACT! Synchronization Issues

ACT! 2006 Premium for Workgroups is not compatible with Windows ActiveSync 4.2. Therefore I cannot install ACT! Link for my hand-held device. Does anyone have a solution for this issue?