Some of us suffer from a very selective memory. For example, you might not remember a contact's name or even the name of his company, yet you remember a seemingly inconsequential detail such as the fact that his kids play soccer.
The ability to perform a simple lookup based on a single field criterion is an element common to most databases; after all, all databases contain fields. ACT!, however, provides you with the ability to create a search on keywords. These searches scour not only your field content but also search through your Activities, Opportunities, Histories, Notes, and Relationships looking for a match. In the above example, you could type in "soccer" and ACT! would come up with a list of contacts, all of which include soccer somewhere in their record.
ACT! responds with a list of contact records when you create a keyword search. A contact can be listed several times if the keyword appears in several places on their record. The lookup results show the contact's name, the field and record type in which ACT! finds the matching data, and the data itself.
The keyword search is a very comprehensive searching tool, and it takes a bit longer to run than other searching methods. To speed up the process, you can limit the amount of elements to search. For example, you can limit your search to just Activities and Histories.
If you use an ACT! E-Marketing account, you've probably already noticed that a history item is created when you update the results in ACT!. These history entries contain information about whether a recipient opted out or ignored your email, or if their email address is invalid or bounces. ACT!'s Marketing Results tab allows you to search for these results by copying various coded information into the clipboard. At that point, you can paste the information into the Search for box of the Search as Keywords dialog window to find the results of your email.
There are several searches that an administrator of a large database may find extremely useful. These searches all pertain to databases that have multiple users and are particularly valuable if your organization limits the number of contacts that can be viewed on a user by user basis. All of these searches are accessible by going to the Lookup menu and choosing Advanced.