Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room
Looking for a Decent Contacts Manager
J-Mac:
I never liked Outlook much for email; it always managed to be limited in areas I wanted the most. IMAP for example, was always difficult to use freely in Outlook. (I am referring to versions up to and including Office 2003's Outlook build). Contacts were always Outlook's strongest point IMO however as my PST grew in size I would experience more and more corruption sneaking in. And it felt like when I really needed to get some important piece of information that was exactly when Outlook wouldn’t open and needed to be "fixed". Drove me even crazier than I already am!)
-J-Mac (June 16, 2010, 11:51 AM)
--- End quote ---
Alas, here I must agree whole-heartedly. I do use Outlook as a PIM and just forgo the email components (very heavy PIM, but effective). I don't bother even setting up email accounts, so these issues don't affect me anymore. I use Outlook for contact and calendar management because it offers all the functionality I want (and a lot more that I don't!), sync's with just about everything, and has not previously been bested by anything else.
Do you intend to use this request with calendaring as well? If not, why not a simple Access contact list application? I believe Microsoft built one eons ago as a trainer for Access that was basically a quite capable phonebook. With this database, you could expand your fields as needed and create reports formatted any way you like. Of course this assumes you know or are willing to learn Access....
-steeladept (June 16, 2010, 12:12 PM)
--- End quote ---
Ahhh, regarding Access, I gave up on it after (I think) the version that came with Office 2003. Prior to that I could get by with relatively simple databases. However once they made the VB editor pop up whenever I wanted to add something my brain starting melting! I was never quite able to wrap my head around it and feel comfortable at all. TBH, dBaseIII+ was the last DB app that I really excelled at. In dBaseIV Borland tried to force users to use the Q menu and I didn't like that at all; you could still work the back end but it tried hard to put you back out front. Access was OK till the VB attack. I stay away from it now because even with a nice, well-designed DB it can still suddenly pop me into VB and start shaking all over!
I installed the Start-Trak trial and I'm not liking it too much. I couldn't live with the personal version; too few fields. I can see having a "Business" version for linking networked computers, web access, etc. Collaborative stuff. But they shouldn’t limit personal users to ONE email address per contact! Kinda silly and IMO just making reasons to make customers purchase the business edition. Methinks this one is getting uninstalled shortly!
Thanks!
Jim
Whoops! You didn't point me toward Start-Trak, did you?! Pretty sure that was Mark - I am obviously getting confused, finger-tied, or whatever! :huh: ;D Start-Trak comments still stand however. :)
J-Mac:
Jim,
Quite right on the fence sitting business! I do plan to purchase StatTrak, though and when I do, I will use it primarily to keep up with addresses and other information on church members as well as family members.
You are right on the personal versus business editions. When I do buy, it will be the business edition for the custom fields. Let me say that the one feature that really sold me on StatTrak is the ability to add individuals to a family along with personal information such as birthdays for that individual. If I remember correctly, this was one of the few relatively inexpensive programs that would allow me to do that.
Mark
-mwfuss (June 16, 2010, 12:10 PM)
--- End quote ---
Mark, my Start-Trak comments are above in my reply to steeladept. Will you be getting the Business edition? Or are the limitations in the Personal one adequate for you? Just curious.
Thanks!
Jim
J-Mac:
Ah! Jim, I understand what you are looking for. I'll see if Handy can do that tonight, I don't see why not...and easily at that.
I once looked into the online capabilities of Handy and also A-book. But this was before I had a website and before cloud computing became so big. Now, I can just put a report on my website and find all my contacts from there. i don't need to be adding and editing contacts when I'm on the run anyway.
Also, as for dialing, I'm your expert there. I looked heavily into that. Handy won that battle, hands-down. I'll tell you why. For dialing, I wanted it to be as quick and easy as possible. All the applications I tried had too much clicking and windows popping that I had to later close, it was all very cumbersome and annoying. What was great about Handy is that you dial, and the little window will pop up while dials. but then you can set it to automatically close after a few seconds, which is GREAT. That means, you just click once to dial, and that's it. No extra windows left over afterwards, and no multiple clicking while dialing. it was the only one that did this.
-superboyac (June 16, 2010, 12:03 PM)
--- End quote ---
Hey SB - I'm not really interested in Auto-dialing or any dialing for that matter. However the printing options seem to be very light. Also, Handy has a butt-ugly UI, doesn’t it? I realize that as long as it does its job the interface shouldn’t matter... But man oh man, this is ugly!! Actually the printing capabilities might be its saving grace for me.
The only one I have installed that I like using (and looking at!) so far is the Efficient Address Book, believe it or not. But its printing options suck so that one's out.
Thanks!
Jim
superboyac:
Jim, there's also a little known program called Addza:
http://www.addza.com/
There's a lot of things I like about it, but I think I've stuck to Handy because of the dialing. however, you mentioned the UI, so maybe you will like Addza. Addza has a very pretty UI with some unique looking things going on. It claims to have flexible printing options as well. Check it out.
Addza's search is the best of all of them. It's like evernote: search as you type, it highlights the matches as you type, and it filters the list down to the matches as you type. It's great. My favorite part of the program. i even mentioned it in the blog thing I wrote here once:
https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=7286.0
rjbull:
I want to avoid a threadjack, but for those interested in my wants/needs in this kind of software -
-steeladept (June 16, 2010, 07:04 AM)
--- End quote ---
If synch with handhelds is a must, how about ListPro?
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version