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Here is the note I sent to Clifford:

Dear Clifford:



I hope you read this and find it helpful.



Act should be an information management program with a contact focus. With this in mind, you should be able to link nearly any type of information/file/url/etc. to a contact. Act should be a translation/viewer/repository/linker program. This would be tremendously valuable. Act does some of this now but does not appear to be heading in the right direction.



Major Problem:

Eliminating WinFax support is shocking. Maybe I only represent a negligible market segment but I would be surprised if this is so. The third party app you recommend does not maintain historical links if you transition to Act 7.0.



Minor Problem:

Support for portable devices is really important as once you rely upon Act, you need/want it with you in most conditions. This means support for Pocket/Palm devices is critical. Historically these programs have not run very well and we are waiting for Treo 650 support.



Act should allow me to attach any file to a contact and allow mouse click access. It should function as a “super file manager” if you will to whatever information I want to link. The integration to Peachtree and other programs is nice but not as critical as the overall file linking capability. It looks like 7.0 allows multiple contacts within one company now.



I’m sure you get many contacts and I am only taking the time to write because I think the program could be so excellent but as it stands today, unless true winfax support comes soon, I will be migrating my business over to a different program. I hope you can help me avoid this. I am willing to share more of my thoughts on the product if you find this e-mail valuable as I really want the program to work.



Best regards,


For whatever good this will do!

[hub]

You can always dream

[rouxdoo]

I finally took everything Act related off my 650 and switched back to syncing with Outlook.

Are you still using Act on the desktop or have you just exported everything to OL? Just wondering how others are coping with this.

[Mark Bergman]

Agendus Pro on the Palm and Time & Chaos make a great combination for the well organized person. I'm a Realtor and live by it.

[pmdied]

Agendus Pro on the Palm and Time & Chaos make a great combination for the well organized person. I'm a Realtor and live by it.

Here! here! on Agendus Pro. What is Time And Chaos?

[Mark Bergman]

chaossoftware.com

[MLinds]

Hub & curtarmy,
Thanks for your replies. I've got Act 2005 and am stuck with it since I cannot backwards to Act 6. The instructions you were pointing out were for Act 6.
Wondering if I should synchronize Act to Outlook and then Outlook to Treo 650. Hate the the 2 step process, but seems like no other choice until Act comes out with an improved conduit.

Best to ya,

Mark

[stokar]

I am currently running ACT! for Palm OS v1.0.0.208 on my Treo 600, and ACT 6.0 on my WinME desktop. It works fine (with a small problem of re-alocating my hot-buttons if I push them while in ACT! for Palm OS). I use ACT! Every day...

If I buy a Treo 650 will it work the same way? If not, what do I need to do to get the same functionality for ACT! on the 650?

I am having a difficult time understanding if the 650 will work for me or not.

I also use Outlook for my personal calander, tasks, and notes so I want a totally seperate database to sync to ACT!

One for ACT and one for Outlook...

[ebeck]

I've been using ACT for almost 10 years & have almost 5000 contacts with notes, etc... I used ACT for Palm in my Treo 600, but could not get it to work in my Treo 650! In my Treo 600 I used to use Act for Palm & Act Link both together becuase they each allowed me to do different things! Now I'm using only ACT Link with my Treo 650! Gives me most of what I need! I purchased ACT 2005, but have not had a chance to play with it!!!!! There is no synchronization available in the new version yet!

Eric

[hub]

Are you still using Act on the desktop or have you just exported everything to OL? Just wondering how others are coping with this.

I am still using Act 6.0 on my desktop. I'm just waiting to use it on ny 650 until something gets fixed.

[hub]

I am currently running ACT! for Palm OS v1.0.0.208 on my Treo 600, and ACT 6.0 on my WinME desktop. It works fine (with a small problem of re-alocating my hot-buttons if I push them while in ACT! for Palm OS). I use ACT! Every day...

If I buy a Treo 650 will it work the same way? If not, what do I need to do to get the same functionality for ACT! on the 650?

I am having a difficult time understanding if the 650 will work for me or not.

I also use Outlook for my personal calander, tasks, and notes so I want a totally seperate database to sync to ACT!

One for ACT and one for Outlook...

Act for Palm will not work correctly on the 650. It takes over buttons and crashes when you look at a note or try to enter a new event. See the earlier posts for more info.

Act Link will work but you cannot then use Outlook. You must choose Outlook or Act Link. The Palm OS will not allow more than one contact list / calendar, etc. I decided to stay with Outlook and just use Act on my desktop. The other option is putting all your contacts - Act-related and all the others including personal - into Act.

[crp]

I sense a few people having Act! problems here.....

Disclaimers:
1. The information to follow represents my current working Act! 6 and Treo 650 setup. This solution allows me to view contact, note and calendar info quickly. If you need the advanced search functions of any of the Act for Palm-type applications, my solution won't work for you.

2. I don't work for any of the companies mentioned. I'm in the financial services industry in sales.

Summary of my Solution:
To get my Act! 6 data on the Treo, I use Companionlink's Doublelook application to sync Act! over to Outlook 2003 on my TablePC. Then I just use Hotsync to sync Outlook with the Treo. I don't have any Act-related software actually loaded on the Treo.


Detailed discussion:
I've been an Act! user since the DOS version and have been using Act! data on Palm-related hardware dating back to the US Robotics Pilot 5000 (which I have sitting next to me and it still works). My current Act! database consists of 5200 contacts and contains calendar data back to 1995.

When I first moved over to a Treo (the 300), I spent many hours trying to shoehorn one of the Act-for-Palm applications over to the 300. I gave up because it was 1) very slow, 2) cumbersome because I had to use the stylus to interact with the program and 3) I could never trust the sync results to be complete and 2-way.

After trying several apps from numerous vendors, (Intellisync, etc), I settled on Companionlink's DoubleLook. http://www.companionlink.com/dl4act.htm

If you've read this post this far, do yourself a favor and download the trial version of the program. It's a 3.5 MB file & you can try it free for 30 days. You setup the main app on your laptop (or, TabletPC, which I use) and it runs in the background. During setup, you specify the Act! database to sync with, what data you want to sync, which database wins in the case of a conflict, etc.

That process takes 5 minutes or so. After that, synch the Treo normally.The initial sync will take 10-20 minutes; but subsequent syncs are only a few minutes long, if that.

Running DoubleLook on my TabletPC and sync'ing with the Treo, without running an Act!-related app on the Treo means I have full 5-way support (since I'm using the native Contact, Calendar and Memo apps). But, the info comes from Act! on my TabletPC, so it's all of the Act! Contacts, phone numbers, calendar data, notes & histories, etc. I don't have to sync a subset of my laptop's data and I still have 6.2 MB free on my 650 (Address dB: 5252 rec, 3K; Calendar 816 rec, 275 K, CalendarLIB-P1CL 62K; Contacts dB: 5252 rec, 191K, ContactsLib-P1CT: 45K).

I use Doublelook instead of the base CompanionLink application because I can instantly see changes sync on the laptop (when you look at Outlook), and they sync both ways.

So I guess my answer to effectively using Act! data on my Treo is to not use Act!-related software on the Treo. Doublelook costs $55 US to keep, but it's been well worth it to me when I'm in the car and can make several calls (while I'm driving) to clients I'll be meeting later that day.

HTH,
YMMV.

crp

P.S. According to Companionlink's website, both Companionlink and Doublelook work with Act! 2005.

[mc2714]

crp-- I used CompanionLink a long time ago, and am not familiar w/ the current version. Two questions, if you dont mind:

1. Does it create a seperate Outlook address book for synching to the Treo, or just lump it in with an existing one? I dont want or need my entire company addy book on my handheld.
2. Can you transfer notes and histories? What fields and how many custom fields are x-ferred?

Thanks!

[crp]

crp-- I used CompanionLink a long time ago, and am not familiar w/ the current version. Two questions, if you dont mind:

1. Does it create a seperate Outlook address book for synching to the Treo, or just lump it in with an existing one? I dont want or need my entire company addy book on my handheld.
2. Can you transfer notes and histories? What fields and how many custom fields are x-ferred?

Thanks!

mc2714:

1. How much is transferred is up to you. In the setup for DoubleLook, there is a Tab labeled "Category Field". You can use any of the categories you've defined in Outlook and only sync that category. So, if you create a category in Outlook called "Business" & add only your business contacts to that category, then that is the only info sent over to the Treo. Also, you can specify which Outlook "folders" are used for sync'ing.

2. I transfer the last 5 notes and last 5 histories. Doublelook allows you to transfer a maximum of 25. That 25 is any combo of 1) Notes + 2) Histories + 3) Attachments (but Doublelook only transfers the attachment labels, not the actual attachment).

HTH,
crp

[CCIM1124]

A couple of guys in our office just upgraded from the 600 to the 650. They could not sync the 650 using ARES with Act6.0. We contacted Act who said we need to upgrade to Act2005 which just came out. Note: according to the spec sheet it will only sync 1-way (computer to PDA); 2-way upgrade should be available in 6 months.
ARES (CoStar Group) said we would need to upgrade and a new upgrade will be out 1st qtr of 2005. The big change for ARES they are going from computer based to internet based. Not happy about that!
End result: 1) they are taking back their 650's, 2)not upgrading to Act2005 and 3) not upgrading to the ARES upgrade.

[rouxdoo]

To get my Act! 6 data on the Treo, I use Companionlink's Doublelook application to sync Act! over to Outlook 2003 on my TablePC. Then I just use Hotsync to sync Outlook with the Treo. I don't have any Act-related software actually loaded on the Treo.

Thanks for the pointer. I have been dorking around with DL and yes, it is a workable kludge. I suspect this is the only solution out there that will work. I just wish that there was some way to link contacts and activities on the palm.

Maybe I'm just dense, but I have a hard time remembering the contact as I work through my calls and tasks. ACT! has really helped me because I can get to the contact and their notes/history easily while I work my activities. When I interact with a contact I can see all of their pending activities and adjust accordingly.

I would pay a lot of money for a solution that really works, I'm just not aware of one.

[colorchange]

CRP

Can you enter todo's and meetings and have it resynch to ACT!?

[rouxdoo]

Here are the Act-Palm 650 solutions I have tried. None of them really work, so I would like to know if anyone has it figured out.

• Act for Palm OS - flat out crashes, useless
• Act Link 2 - no support for more than 4 custom fields
• Intellisync - no support for more than 4 custom fields
• Double Look - freezes my hotsync manager, limited field mapping, buggy
• Companion Link - buggy, can't trust my data to it
• Act-Outlook Synchronizer - seems to work OK but $expensive$

Act Link and Intellisync are straight Act->Palm conduits, they just won't let you use all of the custom fields...too bad because a direct sync between Act and Palm is the ideal solution. Everything else I have found requires the use of another organizer in the middle.

Double Look and Companion Link appear to be good solutions, but they are so buggy and unstable that I just can't trust my data to them. They simply don't work as advertised for me. Companion Link requires dumping all of the data into Palm Desktop and Double Look dumps it into Outlook.

The only thing that appears to be adequate is Act-Outlook Synchronizer. But for 200 freakin' bucks you still have to sync two products for every data change. The trial version of this product is crippled to a total of 500 contacts so you can't even see how it works for your entire data set before shelling out an ungodly sum of money for an "adapter" between two things you already own.

Is anyone aware of something that I haven't tried yet?

[Dan Donahue#WN]

I have used Companion Link Pro for years with Act 2000. Pro allows you to sync 2 databases. They even wrote me a special so if the same name appeared in both databases it would sync both names. I have used it on my Treo 600 and waiting for Treo 650 GSM. Yes there are limits but I have 4000 contacts on my Treo 600.

[Katahdin]

I also use Comapanion Link. What I do is actually use Companion Link to sync with the Palm Desktop. I found this to work much better. I setup a schedule in Windows to run the sync at a specified time during the day. This way, when i hotsync my palm, I get the updated information automatically. It works great.