Windows 7 with Act 6 and Office XP, Word 2002 Problem

[GLComputi…]

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JohnnyGP wrote:

GL Computing, you state later versions beyond Act 6 is faster.  I found this to be incredibly untrue which is why so many people went "back" (forward really) to 6.0.  The newer version took MINUTES to load and 5 times longer to search for a contact than 6.  If the later version worked, I doubt there would have been so many people refusing to "downgrade" to later versions. 

That may have been true with 7-9. It's only true for the later versions if the hardware your running onn is more than 10 years old

Unfortunately, I am not in the same situation as many others who want to keep the old/stable/great version of Act but need to move on to Windows 7. We may have no choice to either use a later version of Act or more likely, find another contact database program.

In the event Sage might have finally gotten it right, can you answer a few questions?

1 - Does Act load up in less than 30 seconds?

Less than 2 seconds for me

2 - Does it take less than 3 seconds to Look Up a Contact?

Instant on my database of 100,000 contacts

3. Will it synchronize with Act 6x versions?

No. All sync versions of any database have the be the same version

4. Will EVERYTHING as in EVERYTHING carry over into the newer version (Notes, Custom Fields, etc)

Yes, of course

5. Does it work with BB software?  BB does not work with anything later than 6x from what I've heard.

The BB dropped their ACT! sync (inlcuding the ACT! 6.0 sync) some time ago. I use Handheld Contact to sync to the Blackberry.

6. Does anyone else know of a contact database than can match the good old fashioned Act 6x?

As long as using 10 year old software is fine and you are happy to remail with older operating systems and versions of Office,

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[JohnnyGP]

Thank you for the fast reply.  It seems they have the the slowness of the previous version so that is great.  Per my questions about what would import into version 11, what would not import?  My most important things would be custom fields and all the Notes.  Thank you!

[GLComputi…]

All fields, notes and histories have converted with every version.

They also continue to make the product faster... ACT! 12.1 (due soon for ACT! 2010 users) is still faster again

[rarert]

I am running Act 6 ON WINDOWS 7 at this time.  No problems.  I've actually run it on a 32 bit and 64 bit unit.  I decided to try act 8, don't like it and am trying to figure out if I can down convert what I've done over the past week back to Ver 6.

[Roy_Laude…]

You should try ACT! 2010 (version 12), there have been significant improvements over ACT! 8. 

To Export your database to ACT! 6 you would need an exporter designed for that, Here is the link to the only one that I know of.

http://www.jltechnical.com/ACTExport7_9.htm 

[OldDogEyes]

I am running ACT 6 on Windows 7 Professional (32-bit) and have had not problems.  I am also running MS Office 2003 Student/Teacher with no problems.I installed both the 6.03 hotfix and the Word 2002 hotfix and could not get ACT to open Word.  After reading the tip in this thread about setting ACT to "Run as Administrator" (on Compatibility Tab), it works perfectly.  I did not need to reinstall ACT to make this work.

I am still getting the error when I close ACT that I've gotten for the past 5 years.  Has anyone found a fix for that?  At one point there was supposed to be a hotfix for that but I never found it.

Thanks..

Doug

[GLComputi…]

It sometimes works with 32bit, less with 64bit

What error?

[OldDogEyes]

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GLComputing wrote: 

What error?

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I assume that you were replying to my last message...

Here is the error that I get when I close ACT6 (and I've been getting it for years - back to Windows XP):

"An unknown error has cause ACT 6.0 to shut down. You will lose any unsaved data"

I don't get it every time, but most of the time.  And I haven't lost data.  It happens when I'm exiting ACT.  I remember back in ACT2 or ACT3 (yes, I go back that far), it used to be a best practice to close the database before closing the application (to prevent database corruption) so ACT has a history of issues when exiting.

I just stumble upon this message:

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I found the solution to this problem on ACT's website.  I have copied the quick answer below, but if you want to read everything about the problem / solution then you can follow the two strings I've cut/pasted below the quick answer.

 Back up the database.

1. Exit ACT!.
2. Right-click the Windows Start button, and then click Explore on the shortcut menu. Windows Explorer launches.
3. Navigate to the folder the database is stored in (by default this is C:\...My Documents\ACT\Database). Click the database folder in the left pane, so that the files that make up each database appear in the right pane.
4. Locate the database file with the .abc extensions (for example, if the database is named ACT6Demo, the files will be named ACT6Demo.abc).
5. Right-click the .abc file, and then click Delete on the shortcut menu.
6. Repeat Steps 5 and 6 for the .abu file (for example, ACT6Demo.abu).
7. Exit Windows Explorer.
8. Launch ACT!, and open the database with the issue. ACT! will rebuild the .abc and .abu files automatically. It may take a bit longer than typical to open the database as this process completes.

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which is located in this thread...

I don't know if that's my problem or not but I'm going to give it a try.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks,

Doug

[Roy_Laude…]

When I was in ACT! technical support we never found a specific cause for the problem. Some people found that if they closed Outlook first, the problem didn't happen but I never used Outlook on my home system and I still got the error. One of the multitude of unsolved problems with ACT! 6.