Help For Those Among Us With CRS

If you've ever found yourself in the middle of a senior moment, or perhaps your short term memory isn't quite what it once was, and short of having your mother or some other critical parent constantly looking over shoulder, how does one keep track of all the necessary tasks to keep one's ACT! database running smoothly?

You could fire up the preferences dialog box from the "Edit" pull down menu, and then locate each reminder function separately. But that takes time, and you will miss a task or two. Because, as our memory now returns, we know that the database maintenance (compress & reindex) reminder is only accessed from the database maintenance dialog box.

So how does ACT! make life easier for the memory impaired?

From the "File" pull down menu select "Set Reminders". Here you will find all the possible reminder functions within ACT! You can set each for the duration of your choice, or choose not to be reminded of a particular function at all. The choice is yours.

My recommendations; you can never backup your data too frequently, so setting the reminder for once a week is probably adequate. Database maintenance (compress & reindex) should be performed at least every other week, so set to 14 days will work fine. If you are part of a synchronization program, you should set the synchronization reminder weekly (7 days) at a minimum. I always roll over my "Calls" and "To-do's" each day, but NOT my meetings (they need to be rescheduled manually). If you run group membership rules, that should be done weekly, so set this reminder for 7 days.

Since I have had nothing but problems with the Outlook integration tools, and will argue that there is no sales need to ever work within Outlook, I find no need to set this reminder. As an additional benefit, by keeping all of your contact information in ACT!, and not having an Outlook (or Outlook Express) address book, you minimize the possibility of catching one of the viruses that plague users of the products of the Evil Empire.

By the way: CRS = Can't Remember Stuff (for those among us who still can't find their short-term memory).