One of the challenges of maintaining a database is ensuring that your database remains consistent. For example, some of your contacts might have the city listed in all capitals, but others don't. Or perhaps some contacts are listed in the USA whereas other contacts reside in the United States. This lack of consistency makes it extremely difficult to query your database and can make the results of your merges look rather sloppy. Correcting these errors on a record by record basis could be extremely time-consuming. Fortunately, ACT! provides you with the ability to correct these errors globally.
At this point in the chapter you might be feeling like you're listening to a broken record. However, I cannot stress enough the importance of creating a safety backup copy of your database before proceeding! Unfortunately, there is no Undo button to reverse your changes once you replace the information in the fields of your database.
- Perform your lookup of inconsistent data.
- Click the Edit menu and choose Replace Field. The Replace Data dialog box that you see below appears:
- Select the desired field from the Replace contents of: drop-down list.
- Enter the desired information in the Value field.
- Click OK.
- Read the warning that appears and then click Yes if you are ready and willing to proceed.
ACT! will zip through your database and replace the information in the field you indicated in step 3 with the information you entered in step 4. The changes will only affect the records that are in the current lookup.
Unless you're planning on changing field data for every contact in your database, make sure you perform a lookup prior to replacing data. These changes are irreversible! For example, if you notice 100 instances of USA that you want to change to United States you'll want to verify that your current lookup contains exactly 100 contacts. If you fail to do a lookup first, you end up changing the country field for every contact in your database to United States rather than just for the original 100 that you intended to change.
Generally speaking, when life—or ACT!—gives you a warning, it's a good idea to heed it. ACT! wants confirmation that you intend to change all the contact records in the current lookup to the value that you indicated in step 4 above. If you're not sure as to the exact number of contacts in your current lookup it's a good idea to hit the Cancel button and head over to the Contact List to verify that you are working with the correct portion of your database. You might also customize the columns of the Contact List to include the field in question just to make sure the changes you are about to make are good ones.
You can change the data in virtually any of your contact fields with the exception of the system fields. And, to make life even easier, if the field you want to change is a drop-down field, ACT! supplies you with the appropriate drop-down list.
aCT! provides you with two variations of the replace fields functionality, which you'll also find located in the Edit menu:
These two functions work in a similar fashion to the Replace Field function so needless to say the same instructions—and warnings—apply!