Conversion from ACT to BCM

[David Grant]

I am attempting to convert my ACT 2006 database into BCM 2007. When the
conversion is about half done, I get a message that says "Unhandled exception
occurred. The application will terminate." Can anyone let me know how I can
fix this?

It happens always at the same spot, so I thought maybe the contact it was
trying to convert had a problem. I went into ACT and removed this contact,
but I still hangs at the same spot.

 

[Lon Orenstein]

David:

Are you the David I know from Eugene?

Since Microsoft doesn't officially support converting 2006 databases yet,
this is a black hole. Typically, there is some corruption in the database
and your idea of trying to delete the record is one good thing to try.
Using ACTDIAG to clean up the db is another. One thing that will trip up
BCM's conversion tool are My Records. Since they tend to have the most
history, they can choke the conversion. You might think about deleting a
lot of unneeded history.

The final gotcha is your email address. I'm not sure during the conversion
process where this occurs, but BCM will look at existing emails in your PST
or OST files and link them to history. Since your email address in your My
Record will have thousands of emails in Outlook, that could choke it. I'd
suggest changing your email address during the conversion, then decide how
to handle Email Auto Linking after the database gets converted.

Good luck!

Lon

--
___________________________________________________________
Lon Orenstein
pinpointtools, llc
(e-mail address removed)
Author of Outlook 2007 Business Contact Manager For Dummies
Author of the eBook: Moving from ACT! to Business Contact Manager
www.pinpointtools.com

 

[David Grant]

Len: Thanks for the reply. I am not the guy you know from Eugene, but
thanks for asking.....

I will take the time to post what I did to resolve this issue, in case
anybody else can benefit. I am attempting to import just over 1200 records
into BCM. The conversion always stalled at the same place, at record 532. I
thought it was due to the record, but even after deleting it, it still
stalled. I "sometimes" got a buffering error, which made we wonder if my
system was lacking the necessary memory power to handle the task. Not being
a computer geek and not having any IT department in my two person office, I
didn't know for sure.

My work around: I did a "save as" in ACT, to create a new database. Then I
deleted all the records after 530. I then imported this new database, and it
went fine. I then did another "save as", and deleted everything up to 530.
I then imported these records into another new BCM dbase (dbase #2), and then
imported the records from dbase #2 back into dbase #1. I found that if I
tried to do a direct import of the second batch of ACT records into dbase #1,
I got an error message every time I tried to access the BCM, saying something
that "Business Contact Manager was unable to complete the last process" or
something similar to that. That's why I did routed the second import thru'
the a separate dbase.

A lot of work......but since I'm trying to centralize my records into one
spot, and since BCM 2007 is a big improvement over BCM 2003, I hope it'll pay
off.

Now, I'm going to read the rest of your eBook, "how to move my thinking into
BCM."

 

[Tengu]

I wouldn't do it. I've never found a flavor of BCM that worked reliably and
didn't muck up Outlook operation (which is itself a buggy program, in my
experience).
Elliot Berlin