Advanced Delete User Wizard

Advanced Delete User Wizard

Have you ever removed a User from act!, only to find you'd really like to know what Notes & Histories were written by them? As you probably know, once you reassign Contacts to a new User, the old User is wiped from the Record.

But with Advanced Delete User, when you reassign Contacts, the outgoing User's name is tagged on every Note & History item entered by that User - retaining a historical reference to entries created by the User being deleted.  

For example, currently, when you delete a User, a dialog box opens and asks you if you want to reassign the Contacts. If you do not select this option, the Contacts associated with the User being deleted are removed. If you do reassign the Contacts, the current Record Manager is changed on all of the entries EVER created by the User being deleted. There is an option to make a user INACTIVE, freeing the license and retaining the histories and notes. For organizations where staff changes frequently, the User Table can grow quite large.

That is why Advanced Delete User was created.

It's easy to use. From the Tools menu, you select Advanced Delete User. A window pops up which allows you to select the User you are deleting and the User to whom you are reassigning the Records. Then it runs through your entire database and adds the text “Original Record Manager: ” (the name of the user being deleted is inserted after the colon) to the beginning of each Note and History record. The Record Manager field/column will be changed to the new User. This allows you to find these records by doing a search for “original record manager:” or by searching for the original Username. You can also choose to reassign Records to, in which case Advanced Delete User will update Notes and Histories with the original Record Manager's name but not delete the User. This is convenient if you want to retain the original User for a period of time.

Click on the screenshot below to see an example of what the records look like after a User has been deleted. Advanced Delete User has removed a User named Fred Flintstone and replaced it with Allison Mikola. Notice the Regarding field of the Note has “Original Record Manager: Fred Flintstone" at the beginning of the entry. Now you can find History and Note items by searching either “Original Record Manager” or “Fred Flintstone”.

Advanced Delete User takes just a couple of clicks.

First, log on as an Administrator. (If you do not log on as an Administrator you receive the following error message:)

Then, click on the Tools Menu and then on Advanced Delete User Wizard. The following dialog box appears. Simply select the "Original Record Manager" whose Notes and Histories you want to be tagged and a new User to reassign the Records to if desired. If you don't want to reassign the Records to another User, choose "".

Reassign records to another user:

Click "Yes, Do It" and the phrase "Original Record Manager: " will be inserted in front of the Notes and Histories created by that User.

Note: If the database is large or has several years of Notes and Histories, this process can take a while to run. Do not be surprised if it takes over an hour – patience is a good thing with regard to mass updating of history records! A Progress Box will be displayed during the process. Clicking "Cancel" will stop the processing at the point it has progressed to. There is no way of undoing what has already been tagged and reassigned. Always back up before making any mass change!

When the process is complete a box will display summarizing what was done (the number of records tagged and reassigned).

In a normal operation, you cannot tag, reassign, and delete the User that you are currently logged on as - therefore you will not find the name of the currently logged on User in the "Original Record Manager" selection box. However, if you only have one User defined, Advanced Delete User goes into a special mode allowing the tagging of Notes and Histories but disallowing the reassigning of Records (there is no other user to reassign to) or the deleting of the only User (act! must have at least one active User defined at all times). You can only work with one User at a time.

Note: This wizard is only compatible with the desktop versions of Act! (not Act! Cloud/Web)