Improved "Find" Utility

[delawaredave]

Does anybody know if there's any "power find" utilities available for PPC2002 ?

I'm having 2 problems today:

1. Find does not automatically include Contact notes in it's search. I have piles of notes under various contacts - these are ignored in search (if I go to each individual contact, open "notes" and then hit "recognize" button - the information will be included - but I have over 2000 contacts and cannot do this practically).

2. I would like to use boolean "and" "or" etc in a search - find records which include "tom" AND "pittsburgh" for example.

Thanks for any thoughts / help !!!!

[rhmorrison]

Find does not automatically include Contact notes in it's search.
It does if you select 'All data' (and I'm using PocketPC 2002). Of course you can't do AND/OR but it will find any phrase in notes to your contacts.

[delawaredave]

Thanks for your post.

My problem is more complex than I thought. I use Act! contact manager software on my laptop and ActLink software to synchronize with my PPC.

Seems that Contact Notes information added/edited on my laptop are correctly synchronized/passed to PPC with ActLink - however the fields are "unrecognized" when I use Find on PPC.

When I add/edit any Contact Notes information directly on PPC, those fields are included in search.

Since all my customer contact account notes are generated on laptop, it is all effectively useless in PPC searches....

Maybe I'm the only one

[ferrysj]

You have discovered, correctly, that most of your ACT (PC) fields do not transfer to the PPC. For lack of a better explanation the PPC uses Outlook as a base for contact information.

If you want to continue with an ACT contact platform, your best option today in the PPC relm is a program called TransACT from www.pinpointtools.com It is a program that replaces Outlook PPC. I tried it and found it very slow and pricey as PPC software goes. To the defense of the developer, it is the first cut and will probably improve over time.

Since I use my PPC more for contact activity on the go, I chose to adopt Outlook and purchase Pocket Informant. What you will lose is the ability to track/sync your "user-defined fields" eventhough you can create them in Outlook on the PC. Hopefully that will change too. It would be nice to create user fields on the PPC, accessible by a tab. What would really be cool is to have those fields change depending on the catagory/group a contact falls within.

Last but not least, there are no Desktop versions of the PPC add-ons for Pocket Informant and Agenda Fusion so you are stuck with Outlook on your Desktop PC.

Regards

[delawaredave]

ferrysj - thanks for very accurate and detailed post - I'm not alone in this morass (or just you and me...).

Given the compromises in all alternatives, I'm probably best staying with my current configuration.

Anybody know of a program or registry key to set all "notes" under Contacts to "recognize" ?

Thanks !