Act! Database Maintenance, Troubleshooting, Repair Services, and Conversion

Activity corruption may occur because of lack of preventive maintenance, power failure/surges, or incompatibilities with Operating System, Hardware, or software versions or service packs. To troubleshoot these issues yourself, we recommend that you perform the following:

1. Delete all Cleared Activities prior to 0 days. The cleared activities are retained in History so the customer is not losing any data. If this corrects the issue and they really insist that they need this information for historical purposes, than you can restore the backed up database with a new name that they can reference when needed.
2. Perform all checks, repairs, reindexes, and rebuilds within Act! and ACTDiag, especially Fix Known Activity Data Issues.
3. If you are unable to view activities in the Task List or Calendar, can you view activities for any user or is it limited to just one user or a select few? If possible, narrow the problem down to a specific user, activity type, priority, and date range. It may be quicker and easier for the customer to create a new user and reassign the contacts and information than to submit the database for repair.

Follow Knowledgebase Article: How To Improve the Performance of ACT!

• Check RAM memory and recommend upgrading, if necessary
• Ensure required Hard Drive space is available on server and workstations
• Check Hardware Acceleration settings
• Delete Temp files
• Turn off other background applications that may compete for resources
• Run all database maintenance: Checks, Repairs, Reindex, and Rebuilds
• Purge Cleared Activities

Also, in ACT! 2009, you can run the Field Usage Analysis Report. This report shows incredibly handy usage statistics on fields within Act! and will provide performance improvement suggestions, such as removing unnecessary fields and/or shortening field lengths. We DO NOT recommend removing system created fields, however, these can generally be shortened, if needed.

1. Launch ACTDiag
2. Go to the Database tab
3. Right-click on the database
4. Select Database Structure
5. Select the Field Usage Analysis Report

There are two possible types of Schema errors that may occur when updating the database:

• "Exceptions occurred while executing Database Schema Update Script. Check the errors in..."
  • Follow Knowledgebase Article Error: "Exceptions occurred while executing Database Schema Update Script. Check the errors in..." When Attempting to Open Your Database After Updating ACT! to the Current Versionfor troubleshooting.
• "Act! Schema Update failed"
  • Follow Knowledgebase Article Error: "ACT! Schema Update failed" After Updating to ACT!for troubleshooting.

There may be a variety of reasons why a database will fail to open. Below are some of the more common scenarios that can be remedied:

• "The database <Database name> could not be accessed. In order to access this database, check your network connection and verify that your database server is available. It may be necessary to disable any firewall software..."
  • Follow Knowledgebase Article Error: "The database [Database name] could not be accessed. In order to access this database, check your network connection and verify that your database server is available. It may be necessary to disable any firewall software..."for troubleshooting.
• "Could not access the specified database"
  • Follow Knowledgebase Article Error: "Could not access the specified database"for troubleshooting.
• "Cannot Access Specified Database..." and the Database is Listed as SUSPECT in the Act! Diagnostics Utility
  • Follow Knowledgebase Article Error: "Cannot access specified database..." and the database is listed as SUSPECT or RECOVERY in the Act! Diagnostics Utility.for troubleshooting.
• "I/O error (torn page) detected..."
  • Follow Knowledgebase Article Error: "I/O error (torn page) detected during read at offset 0x0000 in file 'C:\filename" or "SQL Server detected a logical consistency-based I/O error: torn page..."for troubleshooting.
• "Device Activation Error: The physical filename ...<Database_Name>.ALF may be incorrect."
  • Follow Knowledgebase Article Error: "Device Activation Error: The physical filename 'C:\Documents and Settings\\Database\ACT\ACT for Win 7\Databases\.ALF may be incorrect." When Attempting to Open Your Databasefor troubleshooting.

1. Backup your database.
   • Follow Knowledgebase article How to back up and restore an Act! databasefor complete backup instructions.
   • If you are unable to backup your database, you can optionally detach your database files and submit the database .ADF and ALF files by following Knowledgebase article How to detach an Act! database from the Microsoft SQL Server (ACT7) instance.
2. Upload your database to a file hosting service such as DropBox or Google Drive, and e-mail the download link to actdbrepair@swiftpage.com.
3. Contact Sales or Customer Service to make payment arrangements for this service
4. Print the attached form, complete it and send a scanned copy via email to actdbrepair@swiftpage.com

Service Charges

Service Limitations

• Depending on the extensiveness of damage, some database structure and/or record information may not be recoverable
• Most database repairs are completed within 1 to 3 business days. You will be notified of any exceptions to this.
• If the technician determines that there is significant data loss, you will be contacted prior to completion. At that time, you'll have the option to cancel the job.
• Before we are able to process your database repair request, we will need to have your Act! Data Agreement form and the database.
• Database can only be submitted for repair through a secure file-sharing service.

IMPORTANT: Any data entered into your current database while your data is in repair service is your responsibility to re-enter into the repaired database.