Adding Holidays to Your 2012 Calendar

by Susan Clark on January 1, 2012

Each year I take a few minutes to add holidays as “Events” in our ACT! calendar. By adding them as Events, they will appear at the top of everyone’s calendar. It is also a great way to add employee birthdays, vacation schedules, or even trade shows.

Events display at the top of every user's calendar

It is easy to add these official (and unofficial) events to your ACT! calendar so that every user of the database can see and plan around the reserved dates and events. 

Adding n Event to Your ACT! Database

  1. In ACT!*, click Schedule, Manage, Events
  2. Click Add… (Use the list of 2012 federal holidays below if you like).
  3. Enter the Event Name: and the Date:.
  4. Click OK.

* You must have Administrator or Manager role to create Events in your database.

2012 Federal Holidays
Monday, January 16 - Martin Luther King, Jr. Birthday
Monday, February 20 – Washington’s Birthday
Monday, May 28 – Memorial Day
Wednesday, July 4 – Independence Day
Monday, September 3 - Labor Day
Monday, October 8 – Columbus Day
Monday, November 12 - Veterans Day
Thursday, November 22 – Thanksgiving Day
Tuesday, December 25 - Christmas Day

Other days to mark on the calendar
Monday, January 23 – Chinese New Year
Tuesday, February 14 – Valentines Day
Wednesday, February 22 – Ash Wednesday
Wednesday, February 29, 2012 – Leap Year
Sunday, March 11 – Daylight Savings Time
Saturday, March 17 - St Patricks
Sunday, April 1 – Palm Sunday
Friday, April 6 – Passover
Friday, April 6 – Good Friday
Sunday, April 8 – Easter
Sunday, May 13 – Mother’s Day
Sunday, June 17 – Father’s Day
Sunday, September 16 – Rosh Hashanah
Tuesday, September 25 – Yom Kippur
Wednesday, October 31 – Halloween
Sunday, November 4 – Daylight Savings Time Ends
Friday, November 23 - After Thanksgiving
Saturday, December 8 - Hanukkah

p.s. If the events doen’t display on your calendar, it may be that they have been turned off.
Click Tools, Preferences, click the Calendar & Scheduling tab
Click Calendar Preferences button.
Put a check in the Display events option.
OK, OK

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Printing Labels or Envelopes in Sage ACT!

by Susan Clark on November 1, 2011

I’m frequently asked about printing labels (or envelopes) from an ACT database. Remember you “write” letters and you “print” labels and envelopes. You can review the steps below or watch a quick video if you like.

You can view a quick lesson on how to print a label and then use the procedure below to remind you how it is done.

Printing Labels using ACT 2005 thru the current version of ACT.
Printing Labels using ACT 6 and earlier.

Printing a Label or Envelope 
      (For all versions of ACT)

  1. Lookup your contact(s) first.
  2. File, Print (Click Tools, Print if you are using the Web version).
  3. Change the Printout type from Address Book to Labels (or Envelopes).
  4. Select the size.
  5. Click Print (or OK if you are using an older version of ACT or Open if you are using Web).
  6. Select either Current contact or Current lookup.
  7. Change the “Send output to” from Printer to Preview (if necessary) to check your settings.
  8. If you selected Labels, click the Position tab to change the starting position Row: and Column: (This feature was not available in versions 2005, 2006, or the Web version.)
  9. OK. Verify that all looks OK.
  10. Click the Print button on the toolbar.
  11. Select a different Printer if necessary, load your labels or envelopes, and click OK
  12. If necessary, select the Envelope Feed options for your printer and click OK

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Use Group Criteria for Quick Lookups

by Susan Clark on October 25, 2011

If you have been a Sage ACT! user for a long time, you may not be taking advantage of how the new Groups feature works. In older versions of ACT! you had to manually add and remove contacts from groups. Most people forgot to add their new contacts to existing groups and so the group memberships would be quickly out of date.

All of that has changed with the newer versions. Did you know that you can add a contact to a group based on one or more field values?

You can follow the detail instructions below this video, but live examples are included in this video:

Let’s say you want to create a group of all clients with e-mail addresses.

  1. Click on the Groups slider bar at the left to go to Group Detail view.
  2. Click the New icon on the toolbar (or press the [Insert] key on your keyboard).
  3. Enter a name for the Group.
  4. Click the Add/Remove Contacts… button on the Contacts tab (or the icon on the smaller toolbar at the top of the screen).
  5. Click the Edit Criteria… button in the Add/Remove Contacts dialog.
  6. Create a query that finds all contacts with an ID/Status of Customer (or something similar to what you use in your ACT database) AND where E-mail “Contains Data”. Click the Field Name drop-down and select ID/Status. For the Operator, select Contains. In the Value area, type the value for the first criteria. Click Add to list. For the second row of the query, select the E-mail field and choose the Operator of Contains Data. Click Add to list. Click Preview to check your results so far.
  7. If all looks well, then click OK to save the query criteria for the group.
  8. Click OK once again to save the group.

While it may take a minute or two to define the Group query criteria, it is great for helping you to keep your Group memberships up to date. As you change the ID/Status from Prospect to Customer, the contacts are automatically added to the group. If the e-mail bounces, you can remove the data from the E-mail Address field and the contact will be immediately removed from the group.

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Folder shortcuts in the ACT! Documents tab

by Susan Clark on September 13, 2011

Am I the only one that has trouble remembering the file folder structure that I created on our server over a year ago (much less the one that Ginger or Scott created to store their files)?

You know the ones that I mean. The ones where the  files that you saved for a specific client are 10 levels deep and it’s hard to remember the exact path to get back to them!

The Documents tab in ACT! is great for storing files and shortcuts to files, but sometimes I want to link to a specific folder on the server or my PC that contains all of the files relating to a company or contact that I am working with in ACT!.

There is not a built-in way to do this, but you can easily accomplish this…

  1. Look up the contact in ACT! that will hold the folder shortcut.
  2. Launch Windows Explorer (or a My Computer window).

    Dragging a folder shortcut to the Documents tab

    Dragging a folder shortcut to the Sage ACT! Documents tab.

  3. Navigate to the client folder you want to add to the Documents tab.
  4. Right-click the folder and choose Create shortcut. 
    A shortcut file will be created with the same name as the folder with the word – Shortcut appended to it. If you have trouble finding the file alphabetically, sort the list by date modified to find the file you just created.
  5. Drag the shortcut file to the contact’s Documents tab.

Voila. Double-click the shortcut in the Documents tab to view the contents of the linked client folder.

p.s. Oh and you can probably delete the shortcut in the Explorer Window if you like, since you don’t need it any more (though on some older operating systems it may be necessary to keep the shortcut). A copy of it is now on your client’s contact record in ACT!.

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Making Travel Reservations in ACT!

August 15, 2011

Have you set up your Sage ACT! database to make your travel easier? How do you schedule and record your travel plans? Do you put it on your own My Record? Years ago we set up a simple system that has been invaluable to me when I am traveling (or setting up my travel schedule). I create records [...]

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Could ACT! Secondary Contacts Keep Your Secrets?

July 27, 2011

These days keeping usernames and passwords (and the website login address) for all of my accounts is impossible. Everyone wants to go paperless – which is certainly a great idea – but keeping track of how to log in to see my statement (instead of just opening the envelope) is becoming frutrating. And, of course, it [...]

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Do You Need Another ACTivity Type?

July 18, 2011

Ever want to keep track of activity types other than the 5 basic types that come with ACT! by Sage:  Call, Meeting, To-Do, Personal Activity, and Vacation. Why would you need another activity type? If there is an activity you want to track, a custom activity type may just be the ticket. For example, if your [...]

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When Attaching Outlook Messages to ACT! Fails

June 29, 2011

Do you see this icon in the lower-right hand side of your screen in your System Tray? Occasionally, ACT! may be unsuccessful in attaching an email message to an ACT! contact record when you clicked the Quick Attach icon or when you sent an email from Outlook and elected to record ACT! History of the send. [...]

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Which iPad Should You Buy?

June 6, 2011

I am spending the last few moments at the kitchen table on my brother’s farm before I hit the road to the airport to fly back to Houston. It was good to see family, but because of all the rains, they are late in getting out the corn this year. I brought some Texas sunshine [...]

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Creating ACT Contacts From Outlook

June 5, 2011

You can create an ACT! contact record from a message in your Outlook Inbox. This method of adding contacts is especially great because it keeps me from mis-typing email addresses in ACT!. p.s. The available fields to fill in are fixed. The ID/status and Referred by fields are not available and any required fields that [...]

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