Entering new Contacts, Companies and Addresses from other digital sources - www Contact page, email, Word doc etc.

[#1]

I am in a phase of business where I am picking a lot of new contacts. The biggest time waster is manually entering Contact details when it is sitting there already keyed in an email or on a website contact page or a Word doc I have received, or online business directories I subscribe to, LinkedIn etc etc, the list goes on, you get the picture. (Or a Company or Contact has sent a change of address in any of the above formats.

Obviously one of the problems is that there are as many formats and layouts as listed above. I recall that in Outlook I could copy a whole address and paste it straight into the Contact address and it would manage to get all the address lines, city and Postcode into the right fields. However I don't think it is possible to make that work for all the examples above.

My idea is:

A Contact/Company Name and Address editing window. It would be opened by buttons on the Company and Contact Detail toolbars.

It would look like this:

The window would be divided in half vertically.

The left half would have the following Act fields:

Company; Division; Contact Name; Address lines; Ph numbers; Post Code etc

Option to include any other Company/Contact fields

Company Logo (a new picture field in the company record I just thought of!)

Option check boxes: Add new Contact; Add new Company; Update existing Company/Contact (drop down name selection) and there may be more.

The right hand window would be blank Word style field onto which you can paste the whole name and address info you have copied from the source word or html document/website etc.

THEN I could just highlight the lines or details I need and DRAG them to the right Act field (which applies the Act formating for that field of course). Once completed, I click Apply and Voila, a new Contact and or Company appears in my Act database, or is updated as applicable.

I dream of the days I could be spending on the beach once this incredible time saving process is implemented!!!!! 

Message Edited by GrahamS on 03-03-2010 01:25 PM

[#2]

I should also have included email address and web address fields too of course.

See also this idea for a similar approach to entering new contacts:  Drag and Drop Information

Part of the intention of my idea includes this idea: Automatically Create Companies from Contacts

[#3]

Graham - eGrabber's Address Grabber = your time on beach

[#4]

I too would like to see an automated data entry facility in ACT!

As a half-way measure what I do is put a large memo field on the contact screen and then paste the name and address information from whatever source into that field. I then cut and paste from the memo field to the correct ACT! address fields. Saves flipping back and fourth between screens.

The most annoying example of this is if you Create a New Contact from Outlook, which pops up a window with the Contact name and Email address filled in, but won't then let you tab back to the original email to cut and paste the other information.

Jeff

[#5]

Hi Len, Address Grabber certainly looks useful. I'm not on ACT2010 yet which apparently is the version it is compatable with, but if and when I upgrade it will be one of the first things I will look at. I am still disappointed that I would have to buy an addon to make ACT - a specialist contact database - work efficiently at entering new contacts!!!

Do you use it yourself or have any first hand reports of how effective AddressGrabber is? In my concept I envisage having some measure of control over the movement of the data into the contact because of the sheer number of ways the raw info can be displayed on websites, web directories etc. There would be nothing worse than ending up with a whole pile of contact records to edit into some semblance of order. Hence the check box and drag and drop options I suggest in my idea.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Graham

[#6]

H Jeff, I like your suggestion as an interim measure, pity we can't drag and drop as well, way quicker than copy/paste.

I take it you set the memo field up in Design Contact Layout? The downside is having a 1 use only field permantly in the contact layout. Mine is already pretty busy with a few custom fields added.  Where have you put the memo field?

I was thinking of maybe putting it on the bottom half of the layout, so I would slide the Tabs pane down to use it the once for data entry, then slide the Tabs pane back up once the contact is created so it is out of sight for everyday use. How does that sound?

Thanks again,

Graham.