asked on

How do I open or connect to Act 6.0 Appointments and Notes

I have been able to open the Act DBF file with contact information by using an ODBC connector and extracting the information into MS SQL.

However, I can not find the Appointments and Notes files that correspond to the contacts. The Act Software that is being used has been customized and I'm afraid that may be the problem.

Opening the contacts was a nightmare because there were 250 extra columns added so I had to break it up because no software would open the entire table with that many columns (not sure how they created it, it must be a DBase feature that MS didn't allow for, but I digress.)

Here are the file extensions listed in the Act Folder:

.abc 85kb
.abu 8kb
.adb 6998kb
.adx 2120kb
.blb 5812kb
.dbf 15218kb
.ddb 1kb
.ddf 51kb
.ddx 14kb
.edb 205kb
.edx 92kb
.gdb 3kb
.gdx 29kb
.sdx 20kb
.tdb 5kb
.tdx 5kb

I'm thinking the adb file is the appointments file, but if it is, how do I connect to it. I've tried changing the extension and using ODBC connector for DBase, and that didn't work. I have extracted what I need from the .dbf file.

Because this database has been customized, the standard export software on the market does not seem to work.

Thanks for any information on how to extract this information.

Mike Lazarus

You won't be able to do what you're trying to do. The DBF file is the contact fields... but not email addresses. It can actually support 9999 fields (or max header size of 64K). The database format is actually CodeBase IV, which permits larger files

ABC/ABU - just have data necessary for linking to Outlook address book
ADB - Activities
EDB - Email addresses - as the email field supports multiple email addresses, they are stored in this table
GDB - Groups
DDB - Data Definitions Table
TDB - Transaction Log - used for synchronisation
BLB - Binary Large Object - contains all the detail and regarding information from Users, Activities, Notes, Histories and other data.

You seem to be missing:
NDB - Notes
HDB - Histories

As to your question... you wont be able to get the Activity information via ODBC. Is this a once-off export, or are you hoping to regularly get the information from ACT!?

rbbrownlee

ASKER

I would like to do this export once so the data can be moved to a SQL database for future use. I will check to see if the client has the missing files.

I appreciate your knowledge of the structure, that is very helpful. But, how do I access the information in these files?

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Mike Lazarus

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

rbbrownlee

ASKER

I tried the exporter, it failed. I would love to have it work, it would save me a ton of work.

Mike Lazarus

Did you get all the files? As I said, the list you gave seemed to be missing some

rbbrownlee

ASKER

I still don't know how to access the information I asked for. The response was useful, but not complete.