What makes Contacts Organizer different to ACT or Goldmine?

Contacts Organizer was written in the UK for non-IT aware users. It is easy to use and no training is required. Contacts Organizer was also developed as a general office tool, so does not have the complexity that some users find hard to comprehend. During use, Contacts Organizer displays messages to assist users, and the help button provides additional assistance.

What makes Contacts Organizer different to Outlook?

Contacts Organizer gives you increased functionality. The ability to include details of multiple contacts within one record means that any changes to the record information will automatically apply to each contact. Furthermore, Contacts Organizer can record sales and automatically create charts for sales within the past month or year.

Contacts Organizer provides extensive searching and filtering functionality. You can search on combinations of important fields, including dates, or even entries with a blank field. Address labels can be easily printed out from within the program. Or for marketing campaigns, information can be exported for mail merging.

Contacts Organizer is expandable. You can add up to 30 additional fields for further information, and these fields can be searched and filtered.

Information can be shared between users on a company network, without additional expensive server software. Diary information can be shared for different users, or can show booking information for different resources. Contacts Organizer can even import Outlook appointments.

Not everyone can afford to buy Microsoft Office. Contacts Organizer can be used on its own, although it will happily work alongside Microsoft Office or any other word processing programs if installed.

How many records can the Contacts Organizer Personal and Business Edition hold?

The back-end data file is limited to 2GB in size. In terms of number of company records, we cannot give a specific answer as this will depend on the extent of information recorded in different fields, and also if you define any extra fields. However, we would expect you to be able to easily record information for thousands of companies.

What existing information can Contacts Organizer Personal and Business Edition import?

The simple import feature can import the following contact information from a tab-delimited text file: Title, First_Name, Last_Name, Job_Title, E_Mail, Company_Name, Department, Address1, Address2, Address3, Town, County, Post_Code, Country, Telephone, Fax and Notes.

In addition, the diary section can import appointments direct from Outlook.

My office has a network of 20 workstations on a local area network. Can we all share the same company data?

Yes, you can. The manual that comes with Contacts Organizer details how to install it on a network; although, some knowledge of network administration is required. As Contacts Organizer Personal and Business Edition comes with 2 licences per copy that means you only need to buy 10 copies to cover all the computers your office has.

How many network users can share the same data?

We recommend for efficiency that the number of users should not exceed 20.

I have a laptop PC that I use away from the office. Can I use the Contacts Organizer?

Contacts Organizer Personal and Business Edition enables you to work away from the network for occasional periods, yet still add and edit information. On re-connection to the network, all changes will be automatically synchronised.

When I work away from my office I connect to the network remotely via my telephone or the Internet with a Virtual Private Network. Can I access my shared Contacts Organizer data via the same connection?

We cannot recommend using network connections via VPN even if you are using broadband. Contacts Organizer Personal and Business Edition will enable you to work away from the network for occasional periods (not full-time remote working but more the occasional day or so) yet still add and edit information which is automatically synchronised when you re-connect to the network.

Can Contacts Organizer be used with a PDA or Mobile Phone?

Contacts Organizer is designed to operate on a single computer or small office network. It does not currently work on PDAs or Mobile Phones, although we are currently researching a solution for PDAs.

What are the Microsoft Data Access Components needed for Windows 98 & NT4.0?

These are provided free of charge by Microsoft and available for download from their web site at www.microsoft.com. There is a version of them on the installation CD-ROM which is sufficient for the needs of the Contacts Organizer.