After you use your database for a while and it slowly but surely fills up with more and more contacts, you might feel the need to add a little more power to your lookups. You also might find yourself constantly creating the same lookup and you wish to save it to use it again later. Lucky for you, ACT! has an Advanced Query option.
Many ACT! users associate the word advanced with difficult; fortunately, that's not the case here. The Advanced Query is actually a very powerful lookup that is created by following an easy to use wizard. In fact, you might even start using the term query, which is computer-speak for fancy lookup.
- From the Contacts Detail or List views, click the Lookup menu and point to Advanced and select Advanced QueryYou can see an example of the Contact Criteria dialog window that opens in the following screenshot:
- Select Contacts, Companies, Groups, or Opportunities from the Search for drop-down list.
- (Optional) If you selected Contact in step 2, choose Contact or Opportunity from the Type drop-down list. You can combine Contact and Opportunity fields in the same query; however you cannot combine Groups or Companies with other database entities.
- (Optional) If you selected Opportunities in step 2, choose Opportunities or Opportunity Product from the Type drop-down list.
- Select one of the available fields from the Field Name: drop-down list.
- Select one of the operators from the Operator: field.
- Select one of the available items that corresponds to the selected Field Name item in the Value field. If the Field has a drop-down list, it's also available in Value drop-down.
- Click the Add to List button. The query criteria appear in the middle part of the Advanced Query window.
- To select more than one criterion, repeat steps 5 through 8.
- (Optional) Click in the And/Or column at the end of a row and select Or if you want to indicate that only one variable is necessary in the query. For example, adding an Or between two city fields would indicate that the contact can reside in either city.
- (Optional) Use the parenthesis column if necessary to group criteria together. This is a particularly important step if your query contains both "and" and "or" criteria.
- Click Preview to return a list of all the contacts that match your specification and to check the query for accuracy.
- (Optional) If the query preview did not return the expected results, modify the query using one of these options:
- Edit: Use this to modify a line in the query
- Move Up/Move Down: Use this to change the order of the lines of your query
- Remove: Delete a line in your query
- Click the File menu, and select Save or Save As if you want to use your query later. The next time you want to run the same Advanced Query, you can return to the File menu, choose Open, and open your saved query. Contact queries have the
.qryextension, group queries have the.gryextension, and company queries have the.cryextension. - Click OK when you're satisfied with the query to close the Contact Criteria dialog window.
- Click OK at the Run Query Options dialog window to run the query.
Although the process of opening and reusing an Advanced Query is relatively easy, you might also want to use your saved queries when you create Dynamic Groups.
If you want to really speed your way through creating an Advanced Query, you can start by entering your basic criteria into the Lookup By Example dialog box and then clicking the Advanced Query button in the lower-left corner. The dialog window that opens will contain the criteria that you had indicated in the Look By Example.