Creating a blank Act database to receive export from another database

[jmparsons]

My working database has hundreds of activitities, many duplicate copies, that I am unable to delete. The activities keep reappearing, even though I turn off Outlook Sync.

I created a new database to export all the records from the problem one. My problem is that the "Latest Actiities" records are not carrying over. When I try to map those fields, there is no choice available for "Call Attempt," for example.

How can I export all the information from the problem database to a new, fresh file without losing anthing?

[dshaw111 · Accepted solution]

Hi jmparsons,

You might want to try 'Broken Activity Hunter' free from Keystroke at...

https://www.keystroke.ca/en/brand/Product/broken-activity-hunter.html

"Broken Activity Hunter is a utility for searching for corrupt activities that can disable your access to calendars and task lists. When a corrupt activity occurs in your database, that activity may not be visible within Act!, making it very hard to delete. Broken Activity Hunter allows you to search by date, activity type, and user outside of Act!, and then delete it. You can even search by a text string."

HTH

[JonTaylor]

It's possible to create a copy of a database.

You'd do this by going to File > Save Copy As...

This gives you the option to create either an empty copy (database structure, fields etc) but with no data - OR creating a full copy of the database that carries everything over.

[jmparsons]

I did create a blank database and exported from the other. Everything seems fine, except it doesn't bring over the "latest activities,"

[JonTaylor]

That would be intended, the 'latest activity' fields update when a history of a particular type is created. So when a "Letter Sent" history is recorded, the Letter Sent field will update. When data is imported it's essentially treated as a 'new contact' so this data is not populated yet.

I'd expect a full copy of the database taken as above (Save Copy As...) to carry this info over however as the entire database is copied.

[jmparsons]

That makes sense.

I wonder if it might be possible to go directly into the table containing the activities and delete the offending ones, then perform a maintenance on the entire Act database? It appears that all the data is stored in one table, an .ADF file, but maybe if I could find the offending history entries, delete them manuall then rebuild the indexes, it could fix the problem.

What do you think? I really hate to lose all the activities I've already entered into the database.

[JonTaylor]

Without knowing the specifics of why the activities are reappearing it's difficult to say. If it is because of 'damaged' activities then it may be possible to do this, though directly removing data from the tables is not something we'd recommend without assistance from Technical Support.

If the activities are reappearing because they're being synced in from somewhere (another database or some service such as Outlook) even though they shouldn't be, then we[d need to address that problem first.

I'm sure you've posted about this issue before, but could you remind be the version of Act you're using?

[jmparsons]

I'm using Act! Pro Version 20.1.120.0, Update 3 on a Windows 10 machine.

[JonTaylor]

When you say the activities are coming back after being deleted, are they doing so immediately or after a period of time? Are they 'coming back' at the same time/date as before?

[jmparsons]

I mark the activities to be deleted, then select "Erase." Act locks up for a while, seeming to be processing the command. When I regain control, the activities are still there.

I have turned off synchronization with Outlook. I did notice that there were hundreds of duplicate activities in the Outlook calendar. I was able to delete those, however.

[JonTaylor]

If you delete the activities 'one at a time' do they delete successfully?

I know this might not be a realistic way of clearing them, but it helps to know if it's a damaged set of activities or perhaps one or two damaged activities in the larger bunch causing a problem.