You might already be familiar with the concept of a Navigation or Navbar, especially if you are currently using Outlook. The Navbar generally runs along the left edge of a software program and allows you to access the various features.
You might use the Navbar as a placeholder of sorts. ACT! is a powerful program and offers lots of functionality. Unfortunately a new ACT! user (or even a fairly accomplished one) might occasionally get lost. For example, the Company List view can be easily confused with Contact or Group List views because they look pretty much the same. As you move from one ACT! function to the next, you'll notice that the corresponding button on the Navbar lights up. In addition, if the ACT! function offers both a Detail and List view you'll notice that the corresponding button (located near the top of the ACT! window) lights up as well.
The following figure shows you what the ACT! Navbar looks like:
You'll notice that the Navbar actually includes several areas:
- Current view: lets you know whether you are currently in the Detail or List view
- The Navbar Lookup area: allows you to quickly access a specific record
- Related Tasks: offers suggestions for functionality based on the current area of ACT!
- Navbar buttons: allows you to quickly move to other areas of ACT!
Depending on your ACT! layout, you might feel that the Navbar is intruding on your available screen space. Some of you might not like the Navbar, or prefer to access the various parts of the ACT! program directly from the Menu Bar. If that's the case you might want to minimize the Navbar.
There are not a lot of times that we can boast that using a feature is as easy as "clicking a button" but this is one of those times.
Make sure that you've started ACT! and that a database is open. If you don't see the Navbar running along the left side of the screen it means that ACT! is running but you haven't as yet opened a database.
It is not possible to totally remove the Navbar from ACT! When you collapse the Navbar you are in essence replacing the Navbar with a much thinner version. The Navbar buttons no longer show labels, just the graphic associated with each button. However, you can also resize the Navbar by dragging the Navbar's right edge to the left or right.
Although you might find that the minimized Navbar better suits your needs there are a few things to consider.
Unfortunately, the folks at Sage must not have thought that many people would actually minimize the Navbar; no mouse-overs appear as you hover your cursor over the Navbar buttons. You're left to your own devices in terms of knowing which button is which unless you memorize the Navbar icons.
When you minimize the Navbar you also lose the ability to perform a Navbar lookup; you'll have to create your lookups using an alternative method.