This week brought not one but three clients that called me upset that Act! had “eaten” some of their contacts.  In all cases we were able to solve the mystery of the missing Act! contacts and hopefully prevent it from happening again.

When a user feels that contacts have gone MIA from their Act! database I can think of a number of possible culprits:

• Someone has changed the access rights to contact records.
• Someone has been playing around with synching contact records to Outlook, a tablet, and/or a phone.
• Your filters are set incorrectly so you are not seeing all of your data.
• Someone inadvertently deleted contacts.

I always do my contact sleuthing in the order I listed above because I don’t like to make anyone feel badly when they’re already upset about lost contact records.   However, more often than not the final reason – contacts were deleted by accident – is the most likely culprit.

If a poll of your office has confirmed that no one has been playing with filters and settings here’s a simple way to track down accidental deletions if you are using Act! v16 or Act! v17.

1.  Click the History List located on the Navigational bar running along the bottom left side of Act!.
2. From the Types drop-down uncheck all the options except System Changes.
3. Click the Plus sign to the left of System Changes and uncheck all the options except Contact Changes.
4. (Optional) Change the Date settings and Select All Users.

If you see the name of one of your errant contacts simply double-click the History item and the History Record will pop open.  The Record Manager listed is the name of the person who obliterated your contact(s).

If you suspect that one of your Act! users is deliberately deleting records you can take away his deletion privileges.  You can also remove the ability to delete history records if you feel that one of your users is trying to cover his tracks.

If you have an Act! mystery to solve, give the Act! consultants at Tech Benders a call.  We’re here to help!

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