You would like information on preventive maintenance, troubleshooting, repair, and conversion for your Act! database.
This document is intended to be an all inclusive, one-stop shop for information on maintaining the integrity of your Act! database. The information provided below will assist with regular database maintenance, troubleshooting database issues, sending the database to Database Services for repair, and converting an old database to a newer version of Act!.
Click to Expand/Collapse each section:
Preventive Maintenance
Database Backups
- Perform regular backups of your database within the How to back up and restore an Act! database, as backups may not be successful if you use a 3rd-party backup utility. It is our recommendation that you make daily backups of your database. This process can be automated using the Act! Scheduler. Please refer to the following Knowledgebase Article for more information:
Title: How to Automatically Back Up Your Database
Answer ID: How to use the Act! Scheduler to automatically back up your Act! databaseTitle: Using Third Party Software to Back Up Your ACT! Database
Answer ID: Using Third Party Software to Back Up Your ACT! Database
Diagnostic Maintenance
- Copy your database backups to a secure, off-site location.
- In Act!, under the Tools menu, select Database Maintenance and click Check and Repair... as detailed in Act! database rebuild and repair procedures article.
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This task can be scheduled to occur automatically using the Act! Scheduler. Please refer to the following Knowledgebase Article for more information:Title: How to Automatically Perform Database Maintenance
Answer ID: How to use the Act! Scheduler to automatically perform database maintenance - Perform database diagnostics and repair within the actdiag utility as detailed Act! database rebuild and repair procedures .
General Database Maintenance:
- Remove outdated, cleared activities from within the database by performing How do I remove old data from my Act! Database? . We recommend that you check to remove 'Cleared Activities Older than' with the number of 0 days (this information is still retained in History) as well as any other data that you are comfortable removing.
- Perform a test How to back up and restore an Act! databaseto ensure quality.
Self-Service Troubleshooting
In the event that an error does occur within your database, there are many steps that you can take to attempt to Act! database rebuild and repair proceduresthe problem yourself prior to submitting to Act! Database Services. Below are some troubleshooting steps that can be taken for some of the more common issues; however, you can also search our online Knowledgebase for additional articles.
NOTE: Prior to performing any of the following troubleshooting, make sure you How to back up and restore an Act! database.

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:
- 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.
- Perform all checks, repairs, reindexes, and rebuilds within Act! and ACTDiag, especially Fix Known Activity Data Issues.
- 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.
- Launch ACTDiag
- Go to the Database tab
- Right-click on the database
- Select Database Structure
- 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..."
- "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.
Database Repair Services

- 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.
- Upload your database to a file hosting service such as DropBox or Google Drive, and e-mail the download link to actdbrepair@swiftpage.com.
- Contact Sales or Customer Service to make payment arrangements for this service
- Print the attached form, complete it and send a scanned copy via email to actdbrepair@swiftpage.com
Service Charges
- Database Conversion: $99
- Database evaluation and simple repair to corruption: $198 maximum of 2 hours allocated time.
- Corrupt database repair (Database Corruption): $99 minimum. Any additional work outside of that is changed at $99 per hour and will be agreed and billed before work continues.
- Any Data Repair Service charges incurred under this agreement are in addition to, and are not included with, any fees paid for any Subscription, Support, Maintenance, or Business Care plan you may have purchased.
- Payment must be received prior to ordering repair service. Any credit card information will be collected prior to completion by a Swiftpage representative.
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.
If you need assistance with getting your database or authorization forms to us, please contact us at actdbrepair@swiftpage.com
Conversion
To submit your database for conversion, please follow the steps in the Database Repair Services section of this document.
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