Contact Options Tab

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The Options screen provides you with options to automate, filter and manage your Synchronization process.

ACT-To-Outlook Synchronizer offers options for the synchronization to make it easier to synchronize your Outlook data with your ACT! data.

Options

The options check boxes represent the following:

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Synchronize ACT! Groups with Outlook Categories. All the groups to which the contact belongs to in ACT! and synchronize them into Categories in Outlook.

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Include Private Contacts. When checked, all private contacts are synchronized as well. When unchecked, private contacts are not included

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Force Update of All Records. When checked, all records are updated by the records in the dominant database.

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File Contact As:. This enables the user to specify how to create the keywords for the record in Outlook. These keywords determine how the contact is identified in the Outlook Contact Book.

ACT-Outlook Synchronizer provides the following FileAs Options:

ACT! Contact - Company. The ACT! Contact field and the company name are entered on the FileAs string for Outlook.

ACT! LastName, FirstName - Company. This is the default for ACT-Outlook Synchronizer. The ACT! LastName and the FirstName are used to create the FileAs string.

Company. The Company Name is used as the FileAs String.

ACT-Outlook Synchronizer parsed fileas string.

Here we "force parse" the first name and the last name of the ACT! Contact Name representation. This is aimed for synchronization of ACT! databases that don't have the first/last names properly defined. This parsing mechanism is used on the settings below:

First Last.

Last, First.

Last, First - Company.

Last, First Company.

Last, Remainder

Last, Remainder - Company

Last, Remainder Company

In the File Contact As, you can set the filing as Custom. When custom is chosen, another set of options make themselves available:

You must then build the FileAs string. All the ACT! fields MUST be enclosed in right parenthesis [ACT! Field] for the parsing mechanism to do it properly.

Building a FileAs String. Click on the Build button and the build screen is displayed. Select which fields you want to appear in your fileas screen and separate them using whatever strings you wish. Do not use square parenthesis of your own on the build string. The parenthesis are reserved for parsing the string. However, you can use any other string. Whatever you insert in the string, that is the way the contact will be entered into Outlook.

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Form To Use. If you defined your own custom contact form in Outlook, enter the name here. The name of the form must match the name in Outlook. If there are any discrepancies, the Synchronization of the contact will not succeed.

Addressing Options

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Add phone number extension to Phone number. When set, this option adds the phone number extension to the end of the phone number. For example, Outlook only provides 1 field to add a phone number to. Hence, this feature will take the standard phone fields with extensions and put merge them to make one field in Outlook.

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Remove Phone # Country Code. When this option is set, ACT-To-Outlook synchronize will remove the country code specified in CC form the phone number. The reason this option is available is because ACT! provides the phone number in the format of +1 (408) 555-1212 where +1 is the country code, (408) is the area code, and 555-1212 is the phone number. Some installations of Outlook will accept this phone number. However, others will not. Hence, you can specify ACT-Outlook Synchronizer to remove a specified country code.

Why would you set the country code?

If you do not set the country code, the number in Outlook will look like: +1 (408)555-1212 with a +1, the country code, in front of the area code. If the resulting number desired is (408)555-1212 , then setting the country code to 1 forces the synchronizer to clear the leading +1.

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Add Hyphen to Phone Number. Some ACT! configurations provide the phone number as a string of 7 digits i.e. 1234567 and Outlook will import those phone numbers and not add the customary hyphen to the phone number. By setting this option, you can force the phone number to have a separating hyphen on the last 4 digits before they are imported i.e. The number would look like 123-4567 therefore making it more legible.