Trying to search and delete specific contacts

[madtownguy]

I hope this is the correct place to post this.  I've got an excel file of bad email addresses that I want to remove from my database.  There has to be a way to search them out and delete them instead of manually going through and deleting thousands of email addresses.  Does anyone know how I would go about doing this?

[rbrust · Accepted solution]

Depending on your version, it might be in a different place, but the general area to start is Tools>Preferences.

This will open the prefs dialog box, and on my version (2012), it's under the Admin tab - a button called Duplicate Checking.  The button will be the same in other versions - the tab might be different...

[ghollister]

Hello madtownguy,
Do the bad emails on the spreadsheet match on existing emails and contacts in your database?

[ghollister]

If they do, what was is thinking you do is this:
- add a field to ACT! (or use an existing field) to indicate a bad email
- add a column for this field to your Excel spreadsheet and then for all names in the sheet add a value of "Yes" or "Bad Email" or something similar
- Enable duplicate checking in your database, using the Contact and Email fields
- Import in the spreadsheet, make sure to map the bad email field to the bad email column on your sheet
- For the contact merge options during the import wizard, choose the Merge option on the left side
- When you import, for every contact/email match found it should populate the bad email field you chose in ACT! with the value from the bad email column on spreadsheet
- Do a lookup in ACT! based on the bad email field
- Go to Edit > Replace Field, choose the email field and leave the value blank
- This will delete the email from all the contacts in that lookup

[madtownguy]

Wow that makes sense, I thought it would be easier than that but still that should accomplish what I'm trying to accomplish. Fast answer too dang! I should've used this forum long ago as I normally pull out my hair and cuss at the wall when I'm having ACT problems.

[madtownguy]

 Enable duplicate checking in your database, using the Contact and Email fields

I am unsure of what the above means.  This is done before I do the merge? I don't really know where I would enable duplicate checking.

[rbrust · Accepted solution]

Depending on your version, it might be in a different place, but the general area to start is Tools>Preferences.

This will open the prefs dialog box, and on my version (2012), it's under the Admin tab - a button called Duplicate Checking.  The button will be the same in other versions - the tab might be different...

[madtownguy]

Ok I did all that, on the first merge it added all the contacts, on the second one I selected the Do not add and then it didn't do anything.  I can't get the "bad" that I put in the country column on excel sheet to show up in ACT in the country section.  I selected the merge on left side in 7 or 8 page of import.  I'm using 2010 Act. 

[madtownguy]

Sorry nevermind  I listened too closely and didn't understand why duplicate checking was important.  My list didn't have Contact on it so I changed it to company in duplicate checking and it worked... hurray now to see if the deleting emails will work for me.

[madtownguy]

Thanks it worked great.  it didn't add "Bad" to like 80 contacts not really sure why but I can live with that...

[ghollister]

Glad to hear that worked for you. The 80 or so contacts may not have been updated because there was no exact match on the duplicate checking during the import.