Category: Microsoft Outlook

Move/Recover Offscreen Window

“I have a problem fining/moving an application window that has gone out of the viewing area”

“I have two monitors at my desk but when i take my laptop home and I open ACT! / Outlook / Other application, it doesn’t show on the screen”

“When I start my (application), it looks like it is starting and I can see it in the task bar but it doesn’t come up on the screen anywhere”

We get calls like this at least once a week.  It’s typically due to having multiple monitors but one of the monitors – the monitor that hosted the application – is out of the picture, so to speak.

Basically what is happening is that the application doesn’t realize that there is only one monitor is is still trying to show the application on that second (or in my case third or forth) monitor.

Windows has a really cool feature that helps with these offscreen windows.  Click the icon of the application in the task-bar to ensure that the program has the focus.  Next, hold down the Windows key and press the right-arrow a few times.  That should move the application window across your screens and eventually bring it back onto the screen that is still active.

All is right with the world again!

ACT! by Sage and Microsoft Outlook Tips and Tricks

The ACT!/Outlook integration has come a long way in the last fews years and I am pretty happy with it.  There are a few tweaks I’d like, but overall it’s easy to use for both recording outgoing e-mail messages as well as selectively attaching incoming messages.

If you’re familiar with the Quick Attach feature, you know that it allows you to choose one or more messages and then click the Quick Attach button and it runs throught the process of attaching each message where it finds a matching address in the database.   Somewhat of an (understandable) frustration is that you don’t have any quick indication of whether or not the sender’s e-mail address is in your ACT! database.  If there is no match, the message just drops off into an imaginary bit bucket and is not attached to any record.

Here’s what I do when in doubt as to whether someone’s address is in ACT! or not:

  1. I select the message
  2. Click the “Create ACT! Activity” icon (looks like a handshake)
  3. If the activity window comes up and shows the sender, I know the address is in ACT! (because ACT! uses the e-mail address to make the match)
  4. If it shows my own record, I know that e-mail address does not exist.

You can also check by using the “Attach to ACT! Contacts” button to do this, but I find that it takes longer to load, especially if you have a large database.