Trying to clean up contacts & companies, since no recycle bin - can I create new database to move them to?

[brienne]

We are in the midst of cleaning up our ACT database (contacts/companies in there for almost 12 years, some to be deleted, some saved). In a perfect world there would be a recycling bin of sort, so that they could be “deleted” then reviewed before final deletion. Something else we thought about doing was creating a new database and moving those contacts over – is this something that can be done? For companies and contacts?

Or any other advice on how to manage this situation?

THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH IN ADVANCE! I have received such great help and advice from this forum.

Brienne

[Gary W · Accepted solution]

Hi Brienne,

It really depends on your particular situation. While there is no recycle bin type feature in Act, here are a few different suggestions for handling old data:

1. Create a copy of the database as an archive: You would then perform a lookup on your main database for contacts that have not had any recent activity in a while, and delete them. This way you will be able to quickly access the archive, which would be useful if you think it would be something that gets checked often. 
2. Take a backup of the current database: This is something you should already be doing. Once you have a recent backup that contains all your contacts, you could then delete the old contacts, knowing that they could be recovered by restoring the backup.
3. Tag the old contacts: Create a new field, or edit an existing field like ID/Status, where you could mark accounts as Inactive. You could then include the field in the columns for lookup results, so you can quickly identify which contacts are still active or relevant. This way, all the contacts are always in the same database alongside all your latest contacts for quickest access.

[Gary W · Accepted solution]

Hi Brienne,

It really depends on your particular situation. While there is no recycle bin type feature in Act, here are a few different suggestions for handling old data:

1. Create a copy of the database as an archive: You would then perform a lookup on your main database for contacts that have not had any recent activity in a while, and delete them. This way you will be able to quickly access the archive, which would be useful if you think it would be something that gets checked often. 
2. Take a backup of the current database: This is something you should already be doing. Once you have a recent backup that contains all your contacts, you could then delete the old contacts, knowing that they could be recovered by restoring the backup.
3. Tag the old contacts: Create a new field, or edit an existing field like ID/Status, where you could mark accounts as Inactive. You could then include the field in the columns for lookup results, so you can quickly identify which contacts are still active or relevant. This way, all the contacts are always in the same database alongside all your latest contacts for quickest access.

[ch1p]

Just a slight tweek on what Gary has suggested. For my clients who need a fresh start we create a new empty database with all the users in it. We then get the client to create a Group called New Database.

You now put all those you want in the new database into this group. Finally you do a database to database export using the group as the lookup to be exported. We then rename the old database Archive so it is is still there if an old record needs looking up or transferring to the new database.

[brienne]

Thank you SO much for the reply Gary! Looks like the best thing for us is to make a copy of the database to keep as an archive and then delete (clean up) contacts and companies. 

[brienne]

Thank you Ch1p! That is definitely another way to approach it as well. Since there are many contacts/companies that were created before current employees got here, I will be the one going through and doing the cleanup and assigning which to keep/archive. 

Thanks again!