Modifying ACT!’s Notes History Report

by Rich Spitz

March, 1998

The Notes/History report is a valuable tool that helps you to see what you’ve done with a client. However, modifying, or customizing, it can be a daunting task. I’ll tell you why and show you how in this article.

When you run the standard Notes/History report from the Report menu you get a report that contains all the Notes and History items for the selected contacts.

Using The Filter

To further refine your report there are several filters you can use. To get to the filters, simply click on the Filter tab in the Run Report dialog box.

From the Filter tab you can select whether or not you want the Notes, History, and/or Attachments included in the report. And, you can select date ranges to show the specific periods you want displayed in your report.

This all works just fine. However, a problem exists when you modify this report and save it with a different name.

When you do this it doesn’t run correctly because the report’s filters only run properly when it is named note-hist.rep. Any change in the name will cause the filters not to work. And when you run the report every record in the database is included in your report.

Solving The Problem

This problem has existed for a while but hasn’t been fixed. In the mean time, you’ve two ways to solve this problem.

Copy the Report

If you would like to make permanent changes to the original Notes/History report, and don’t plan to use it again in its original format, make a copy of the original report — just so you’ve got a backup in case you change your mind — and then make your changes.

This is how you make a copy of the original notehist.rep report and save it with a new name:

1. Select Reports, Other Report. The Open dialog box appears.

2. Right-click on the notehist-.rep.

3. Select Copy from the Win95 shortcut menu.

4. Right-click anywhere inside the list of files.

5. Select Paste from the Win95 shortcut menu.

Windows 95 creates a new file named Copy of NOTEHIST.REP.

Now you can edit the Notes/History report and you will be able to properly use the filters without fear of getting unnecessary records.

Using Both Reports

If you would like to use both the original Notes/History report and your modified report you need to create a new directory, lets call it NewReports. Inside this directory you place a copy of the original Notes/History report with the notehist.rep name. (Since the report still has the original name it will work properly.)

ACT!Tip: To make it easy to access this report, use the Reports, Modify Menu command to add your new Notes/History report to the Reports menu.

UPDATE_C

On another point relating to reports, Symantec has come out with a patch to correctly filter different users when running the Task List in a multi-user database. This is called UPDATE_C and is on the Symantec web site at www.symantec.com/act in the FTP section.

You must be running ACT! version 3.07 for this to work. It also increases the speed when using filters for reports. Together with these two tips you should be better off creating and running reports.