As an ACT! consultant I am often called on to answer ACT! questions. And yes, there is a charge for my services. Generally, ACT! users reach out to me after they’ve gone through a variety of attempts to solve their issue. Sometimes the solutions to the ACT! technical support issue are quite involved and incorporate solutions that might be beyond the realm of what a typical user can accomplish on their own. Sometimes, however, the answers are the type that want make you want to smack yourself on the head and yell, “Why didn’t I think of that??” I had two such questions this week and thought I’d share the solutions with you.
My first caller was actually the ACT! Administrator of a Twenty-Plus user database. He is quite tech savvy but feared that one of his users had become corrupted. The user would schedule activities but then not be able to see them in the Task List or Calendars. All other users were scheduling activities without a hitch. The Admin had the user access the calendars of other users; all activities appeared as expected. He then tried to access the calendar from various work stations always without success.
As I logged into the database I explained to the Admin that it was not uncommon to experience user corruption in the ACT! activities. This is usually a result of a user having hundreds, if not thousands, of uncleared activities going back several years. I was surprised at what I saw in the user’s Task List; the status bar said that there were only 20 activities yet I could only see two.
My mouse rested briefly on the area where an activity should have been appearing; I was surprised to see a pop-up box appear with the details of the activity. I double-clicked the “phantom” activity which opened up exactly as expected. At first glance the Schedule Activity window looked perfect until I gave it another good look: to my surprise the font color was set to white.
I set the activity color to black, and then modified all of the other activities in the same way. Voila, all activities appeared. Guess that’s what I get paid the big bucks for!
Moral of the story? Using a white font on a white background is never a good idea.
Stay tuned for next week’s edition when I help a user to solve the mystery of the password!
