ERROR: This contact no longer exists in the database

[ghollister]

Hello glyons,

For instructions to rebuild your preferences file, please see KB Article 14770. Go to bottom of the article and follow the steps to manually rebuild them. Prior to rebuilding, ensure that you have closed all programs including ACT! on your machine. Please note that this action will reset all ACT! preferences to their defaults. After you rebuild the preferences file, it is advised that you reboot your machine before reopening ACT!.

[glyons]

Thanks Greg, have just followed your advice. I get the error mesage "Requested Registry Access is not Allowed". Ultimately I can open teh databases but when I do I get the Getting Started interface which I don't know how to remove. Hope this is teh last time I bother you!

Regards / G

[ghollister]

The registry access warning would indicate you do not have local admin rights on your machine, which you will need. If you are running Windows Vista or Windows 7, then first try disabling User Account Control (UAC). You can do this from the User Accounts option in your Windows Control Panel. Also, make sure your Windows login is an Adminstrator account.

[glyons]

Thanks Greg but I am the Administrator as I'm the only one using the PC. I have read that it's not good to diasable UAC. I didn't have this problem before, so it would seem it's ACT (again) which is causing teh problem: Tks in advance. G

[glyons]

Hi Greg,

Despite following your advice I have had exactly teh same problem and error message again today in one of the original databases. It seems the problem only happens after entereing data in the phone field. The phone field is set to Free Form as I don't want any preset codes with brackets appearing in the phone field. If you have any ideas as to why the problem persists I'd appreciate your help. Tks.

GL

[tonyholowitz]

I have a client with this exact issue.  Have you ever figured out how to solve it?

[tbudde]

Yes. I did. Go back to the first page.

[tonyholowitz]

I recently came across this error message with an old client that barely uses act. What I found interesting is that it only impacted some contacts. In one particular contact, whose first name was Pamela, we could not add a mobile phone number without getting that error message. A new contact and other existing contacts were tested and there wasn't an issue.

What I found odd was that it was specific contacts that created this error message. It seems as if it was the contact that was corrupt.