At this time,  the “Sage sanctioned”  access method to retrieve the data from  an ACT! 7,8 or 9 (aka 2005, 2006, 2007) database is via the OLE DB tools they provide.  This will export the contact, company and group data including the notes and history records for the contacts. 

It will not export activities, attachments and group membership relationships.  It will not export any notes and history data that was entered specifically for a group and/or company. 

Sage will provide tools which will give users read only and sa (system administer) access.  The last information we had is that there is a charge for these utilities -- $400 for the ACT! Reader and $1000 for the sa password.

There are other ways to get at ALL of YOUR data.

The easiest,  is to make a copy of your database from ACT! and use your own SQL server instance. 

The SQL version of the download will install the appropriate SQL serve for your system.  The MSDE server is named EXPORTER_MSDE.  The SQL Express server is name EXPORTER_SE.

When you use your own SQL server, you don't need to have a copy of ACT! on your system.  In fact, it's probably better that you do not.

Export back to ACT! 6.  

Rebuilding the ACT! 6 database is SLOW.  There is not much we can do to speed it up.   We have to use the tools provided by Best Software.  A 5000 contact record ACT! 7 database with 20K note records and 30K history records took 7 hours to complete.  So, make a sample of your database to be certain everything is working properly before doing a full export.

It can also be tricky especially if you have a lot of customized fields in ACT! 6 and want to be able to use your existing layouts.

We do provide a conversion service that you might want to consider.

Conversion services.

If you have questions, please contact us.

Thanks