Synchronizing data lets you:

• synchronize with other users so that you can share contact information with your colleagues. This ensures that the contacts in your database match the contacts in other users’ databases, and that you and your colleagues have the most up-to-date contact and group information, including notes, histories, activities, and sales data. Note: If you need to share data with users who have access to a shared network drive, you may prefer to set up a multiuser database rather than use synchronization.
• synchronize with another database such as between your laptop and your desktop computer. For example, you may add contacts, schedule activities, or record notes on your laptop computer, then need to synchronize this with the central ACT! database in your main office.

What happens when you synchronize?
During synchronization, you can choose to send or receive updates, or both send and receive updates. When you synchronization data, ACT! performs the following tasks:

• Receives updates sent to you and applies them to your database
• Consolidates changes from your database and creates an update file of them
• Sends the update file to another user or to another database

ACT! applies the most current information from the contact and group records on a field-by-field basis, and other records such as activities, histories, notes, and sales data on a record-by-record basis.
For example:

• If you changed a contact's telephone number, and someone else changed that contact's fax number, ACT! merges both changes into the contact record.
• If two users changed the same contact's fax number and the changed fax numbers do not match, ACT! applies the most recently changed fax number.
• If two users changed other records such as a note record, all the information for the most recently changed note record replaces the information for the older note record.

What types of data do not synchronize?

• Files attached to contact and group records. The links to attachments in the Notes/History tab are synchronized, but the files referenced by the links are not synchronized.
• New or customized contact and group screen layouts
• ACT! preference settings
• Custom menus and toolbars
• Macros
• Letter, report, envelope, and label templates

It is very important that synchronization be setup properly, let Hogan Data assist you.