Sometimes it's the little things that matter. You work with a software program for so long that you "assume" someone else knows the tricks and tips. Ah, yes, you know what they say about assuming. Well, it happened again. While working with a client showing them my Company Wizard Plus add-on for ACT, I did one of my favorite tricks and the client went - "whoa, stop right there - what did you just do." I had hit Ctrl A to highlight all contacts in the list. On any given day, I must use that action at least 10 times. So, of course I was surprised they didn't know this. At that point, I then showed her the "highlight a contact, scroll down and then click Shift to do a mass selection" trick. She got all excited - even more so when I told her you could do this in Windows Explorer and that this was a Windows function, not an ACT-only one. Made her day.
Today was another one of those "ah ha" moments. I sort of like vCards, and sort of don't. Sometimes they attach to my outgoing emails and sometimes they don't. That's why I have a love/hate relationship with them. To get around that, I click on a field on the top part of my ACT contact layout, and then do another Windows keystroke command - Ctrl C (copy) and then do a Ctrl V (paste) into an email. It copies all the main address data into that email. It's a fast way to send the details without relying on a "maybe it will work" function like the vCard attach. I did this while doing a GotoAssist session and the client just freaked out about how easy and cool was that trick. And how poorly documented in ACT. But now they know.
There are a lot of Windows keyboard tricks that come in handy in a lot of applications - not just ACT. If you try to do a copy and paste and it doesn't work - try the Ctrl C and Ctrl V (copy and paste). Ctrl X is a Cut instead of Copy. Simple tricks - big rewards.
Another ACT tip is one that has been in ACT forever but people running the newer version may not be aware of it. Ever been on a List view and wished you could scroll through the list and see the contact data in another window - side by side? Well, you can. Under the Tools - Preferences - Startup tab is a check box that says Open each view in it's own Window. When you run ACT in this mode, you can put the List view up next to the contact detail view and as you click on contacts in the list view you will see them show up on the detail view. A new menu item called Window shows up at the top and for fun click on Window - tile vertical. I set this up on a client machine so I could quickly scroll through the data looking for some anomalies and again we had a "ooo - that was cool' event. Don't you just love them.
The clients had fun learning them; I had fun showing them and said to myself, hm, this would make a great Blog article. And here you go. See, inspiration for Blog articles is easier than you think. They happen every day.