You want to avoid crashes, conflicts, and corruption in ACT!

Answer:

Operating System-Specific Issues:
If you use Windows NT, 2000, or XP, and access the ACT! database over a network, please see the following document:

Title: Important Issue concerning sharing an ACT! Database over a Network
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If you use Windows 95, and access the ACT! database over a network, please see the following document:

Title: Why Must I Keep Reindexing My Networked ACT! Database?
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Important Note: ACT! 6.0 is NOT supported on the Windows 95 Operating System.

General Maintenance and Backup:
Regular maintenance is critical to keeping your ACT! database corruption-free. Database maintenance should be done weekly or bi-weekly. Multi-user databases and large databases should be reindexed more often. To perform database maintenance, you must be logged in as a Database Administrator and be the only user currently in the database.

To perform database maintenance:

1. Click the File menu, point to Administration, then click Database Maintenance. The Database Maintenance dialog appears.

2. Under the Periodic Maintenance tab, click the Compress Database check box, and then click Reindex. ACT! begins the reindexing process.

Note: Reindexing a database may take some time. It is determined by the size of the database, the speed of computer, as well as the speed of your network, if the database is stored on a network drive.

Along with maintenance, you should regularly back up your database. For assistance in backing up your database, see the following documents:

Title: Backing Up and Restoring Your ACT! Database
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Cleaning Up Your Database:
When you clear an activity, the activity is not deleted; it is marked for deletion. When the activity is cleared, a history entry is created on the Notes/History tab. To keep your database healthy, we recommend that you purge cleared activities regularly (or always keep the number of cleared activities to under 600). Purging cleared activities does not remove the history of the cleared activity from the Notes/History tab.

Note: Back up your database before clearing activities.

To determine how many cleared activities are in your database:

1. Click the View menu, then click Task List.

2. Click the Filter button (if necessary).

3. Enable all the check boxes under both Types to show and Priorities to show. Clear the Show cleared activities check box.

4. In the Dates to show drop-down list, click All dates.

5. Click Select Users, click All users, then click OK.

6. In ACT! 6.0, there is an Activity Count on the bottom bar of the ACT! window. Make note of the number.

7. Enable the Show cleared activities check box. In ACT! 6.0, the Activity Count will update to include the cleared activities. Subtract the first Activity Count number from the second and you will get the number of cleared activities.

To purge the cleared activities from the database:

1. On the File menu, point to Administration, and then click Database Maintenance. The Database Maintenance dialog appears.

2. Under the Data Clean-up tab, enable the Cleared activities older than check box. Leave all the other check boxes cleared.

3. Set the day count to the right of Clear activities older than to 180 days, and then click Remove Selected Items. The cleared activities more than 180 days old will be removed from the database, and then it will be compressed and reindexed. If 180 days is not recent enough to reduce the cleared activity count below 600, clear activities again, lowering the number of days.

Company Field Drop-Down:
Whenever you enter or import a new contact with a new company, ACT! can automatically add that company name to the company drop-down list. If you have many contacts with different companies, the company drop-down list can become extremely large. A large company drop-down list can slow the performance of the database and cause problems. The following process will prevent ACT! from automatically adding new companies to the company drop-down:

1. Log in to the database as a Database Administrator. If the database is multi-user, all other users must be logged out.

2. In the Contacts view, click the mouse pointer in the Company field.

3. Click the Edit menu, then click Define Fields. The Define Fields dialog box appears.

4. The Record type drop-down list should be set to Contact, and Company should already be selected in the list of fields on the left.

5. Click the Drop-down tab.

6. Clear the Automatically add new items to drop-down check box.

7. If there already is a long list of companies in the drop-down list, clearing the list will improve the responsiveness of a variety of functions in ACT!.

To remove drop-down list entries:

a. Click the grey box to the left of the first item you want to remove from the list. Scroll to the last item you want to remove, press and hold the SHIFT key, and then click the last item you want removed. All the items between the two clicked entries will be highlight. Release the SHIFT key.

b. Click Delete.

Tip: To manually select entries which are not in a single range, hold down the CTRL key while clicking the items you wish to remove from the drop-down list.

8. Click OK to close the Define Fields dialog box.

Note: You may want to clear the Automatically add new items to drop-down check box for other fields as well. All fields with drop-down lists will have the check box enabled by default.

Transaction Log:
Every time you modify ACT! data, ACT! automatically tracks the field-by-field changes to a database in a transaction log. The transaction log grows each time changes are made. If you are not regularly synchronizing with other databases, the transaction log is not necessary and should be disabled. If enabled, the transaction log can cause problems such as database corruption.

1. Log in to the database as a Database Administrator. If the database is multi-user, all other users must be logged out.

2. On the Edit menu, click Define Fields. The Define Fields dialog box appears.

3. Click the Advanced tab.

4. Clear the Enable transaction logging check box in the lower right portion of the dialog box.

5. Click OK to close the dialog box.

6. On the File menu, point to Administration, and then click Database Maintenance. The Database Maintenance dialog box appears.

7. Click the Data Clean-up tab.

8. Select the Transaction logs older than check box. Leave all other check boxes cleared.

9. Set the day count to the right of Transaction logs older than to 0 days, and then click Remove Selected Items. All items in the transaction log will be removed. Following the removal it will automatically be compressed and reindexed.

Indexing of Fields:
If a field is indexed incorrectly, it can cause problems with lookups and damage the database. When a field is indexed, lookups on that field are faster. However, having too many indexed fields can slow down a database.

To check the indexed fields and add index fields:

1. Log in to the database as a Database Administrator. If the database is multi-user, all other users must be logged out.

2. On the Edit menu, click Define Fields. The Define Fields dialog box appears.

3. Click the Advanced tab.

4. On the left side is the list of all the indexed fields. There are eight contact fields and four group fields that are indexed by default, and cannot be changed. (Select which type of indexes to show by clicking either Contact or Group in the Record type drop-down list.). If you click on an indexed field in the list on the left and the Index on and two Then on fields are not all dimmed, then the field is a custom index that has been added to the database.

5. Verify that all indexed fields have been indexed by at least two fields. (For example: Company field has an Index on setting of Company, a first Then on of First Name, and a second Then on of Last Name.)

6. To add an indexed field, click New Index, and then click the desired field in the Index on drop-down list. Click a second field in the first Then on drop-down list. If you want, click a third field in the second Then on drop-down list. Each custom indexed field must have at least the first two drop-downs specified, otherwise the index will not work properly.

7. Click OK when finished.

System Date:
If the computer short date format has not been changed to Y2K format, this will effect the dates on activities, notes, histories and any field that is a date field. This does not affect Windows ME, 2000, or XP.

To verify the date format:

1. Click the Windows Start button, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel. The Control Panel launches.

2. Double-click Regional Settings. The Regional Settings Properties dialog box appears.

3. Click the Date tab.

4. Under Short date, verify the Short date style is set to mm/dd/yyyy or m/d/yyyy.

5. Click OK to close the dialog box and save any changes.

Note: This effects not only the ACT! program, but all of Windows.

Drivers:
In most cases, updating drivers for your video, printer, modem, monitor and network cards will not only make ACT! work better, but also make any program running on Windows run better. You may need a technician to install the drivers, but most drivers can be found at the hardware device manufacturer's Web site or following Web site: http://www.cnet.com.

Networks:
For information about creating mapped drives on the workstations and the server, please see the following document:

Title: How to use ACT! on a Local Area Network (LAN)
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If you need further assistance setting up Windows networking or mapped drives, contact a local computer technician or Microsoft support.

For information about using performance issues when accessing a database over a network, please see:

Title: Slow Performance when Multiple Users Access a Networked Database
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