Contact Form

Use Log entries to store info on a prospect. Mark as a Client when you close the deal. Also enter the (hourly) Rate and Terms to set the invoice due date. Add contacts to special marketing or discount groups (Grp) you designate. Click Directions for directions to contact or Map for Google Maps to the job street. Enter Distance one way to auto calculate mileage tax deduction each time you enter ONSITE on an invoice detail record. Click Invoice link to open Invoice form or Details to search all invoice details for the contact.

Enter a string in the Find box to locate a contact. The status bar and tool tip remind you that you can
Find In |ContactID|CLIENT|INACTIVE|SEL|Company|FirstName| LastName|Street|City|State|Zip|JobStreet|JobCity| JobZip|WorkPhone|CellPhone|HomePhone |Email|Website|Directions|Distance |Terms|Rate|Grp|Comment|Created|.
Click Find again to see all the contacts again. Use the vertical bar as delimiters to specify the start or end of a field. Use both to specify the field contents must match exactly. Wildcard ? character matches one character. * matches 0 or more characters. If more than one record is shown in the record counter in the lower left of the form, use the PgDn or PgUp key to move to the next or previous record. Right-click on any field to use Access' sort or filter by form features.

When you check the Inactive checkbox, the contact only appears when Actives is unchecked at the top of the form. Likewise, while Clients is checked, on contacts who have Client checked appear. Both Actives and Clients are checked by default. The Bal box at the top of the form shows the unpaid balance of invoices sent to the client. Click the blue Bal link to include uninvoiced work in the balance. Click the blue Website link to browse to the contact's website.

As you tab through the fields, you'll see what is expected in that field in the status bar text above your Start button in the lower left of your screen. If you hover over a button, link or combo for a second or two, you'll see what it does in a control tip. Phone numbers are displayed formatted, but only digits are stored. On date fields, you can use the Access date picker to choose the date from a calendar, use the numeric + or - to add or subtract a day, or double click the field to toggle between blank and today's date. Click the blue Grp link to see valid codes to enter in the Grp field. If you include an exclamation point ! character in the Comment field, it will have a yellow background.

Click SelAll to check the Sel checkbox for all records in the recordset. You can use the Find box or Filter by Form to limit those records before clicking SelAll. SelAll is additive, so if you click SelAll on 4 records that contain Dallas and 3 that contain Houston, 7 records will be selected. Use the Clear n Sel recs to clear selected checkboxes. If the form is filtered, only the records in the recordset are cleared, so in the above example, if you wanted to clear 2 records with a Gmail address, Find for gmail.com and click Clear Sel recs. The message box would then say There are 5 records selected in the Contact table. Most reports and exports have an option to show only recs where Sel is checked.

If you log on as a normal user instead of a super user, the form colors may be blue instead of brown and you won't see the Del button to delete records. Underlined letters on labels and command buttons are hot keys. For example, pressing Alt-X on the keyboard is the same as clicking the Exit button. Alt-L is the same as clicking the Log link.

Log Form

Click Log to open the Log form. Timestamp, user and ContactID will automatically be added when you click New. Enter up to 255 chars of info and if you want a task to appear on the ToDo report, enter a date and time in the Action field. Action items will have a yellow background until the date is removed. Like the Contact form, you can use the Find box. See the status bar to see the fields searched. You can sort on the blue links at the top of the form. Click the link again to sort in descending order. The Search box at the bottom of the form highlights the first string that contains the characters you enter. If you open the Log form from the Setup form, it shows log entries for all contacts. The company name appears at the top of the form to show to which contact the record is related. Super users can move a log entry to another contact by changing the ContactID.

Features of the Contact form above, such as Find with delimiters, tool tips, date formatting and hotkeys, work for this form and all other forms in the system. Use the arrow keys to move up or down one record on continuous forms. PgUp and PgDn move a to the next page of records.
Close