Viewing Company Versus Contact

Tastes great, less filling? Left brained, right brained? Company name, Contact name? Not that the last pairing is one of the great debates of our time, but when you think of your clients (prospects and customers) which comes to mind first, Company, or Contact?

The "Look Up" functions in ACT! works well with either company name or last name. But the ACT! calendar program default is set to last name. Therefore the task list in each calendar view shows contact names and phone numbers, not company. The philosophy here is that we have relationships with people, not companies. However, for many salespeople their first thought is of the company by name. ACT! does accommodate this mindset in its preference settings (Edit//Preferences, under the "Calendars" tab, "On calendars show" check your preference). But this requires several steps to change back and forth.

Can ACT! accommodate a split personality viewing his or her calendar with fewer steps? Happily, yes. In any calendar view, pull down the "View" menu. The bottom item in the list is either "Company Names Only" or "Contact Names Only". Clicking the appropriate item will satisfy either side of the argument when the mood fits.

Sadly the "Task List" view only shows tasks with contact names. This may not be changed. Those Purple pills may be the answer to help some folks cope here :-)