ACT!'s Task List is a great way for you to access all of your tasks including your scheduled Calls, Meetings, and To-Do items. However, some ACT! users don't like ACT!'s Task List because it has to be related to a specific contact record. In addition, they find it difficult to reprioritize their various tasks.

The older versions of ACT! (those versions prior to ACT! 2005) included a standalone program called SideACT!. SideACT! gave users a place to quickly jot down miscellaneous thoughts and notes in the same way you routinely write them down on the scratchpad that you probably have sitting on your desk.

The Sage ACT! Scratchpad is a new addition to ACT! 2012. It provides users with a handy way to keep a list of tasks that they need to do or notes that they want to jot down. You can enter personal or work items, and you can use the Sage ACT! Scratchpad whether Sage ACT! is open or closed. You can easily reorder or edit the items that you've listed on your Scratchpad. In addition, you can easily transfer the important items on your Scratchpad into your ACT! database, and delete other items that are less important or that you no longer need.

The Sage ACT! Scratchpad installs automatically when you install ACT! 2012 and a shortcut is placed on your desktop. You can see what the shortcut icon looks like in the following figure:

There are a number of ways to open Scratchpad, including:

All of these options will result in the opening of the Scratchpad. Once opened, you can close, maximize, or minimize Scratchpad exactly as you would any other software. However, although you can drag any of the Scratchpad borders to make the Scratchpad larger, you cannot make the Scratchpad any smaller.