ACT! to BCM Migration

This post illustrate the process of migrating ACT data to BCM.

Supported Versions

Currently BCM supports ACT 4.0, 5.0, 6.0 and 7.0.

ACT 4.0, 5.0 and 6.0 have .dbf file extensions, whereas ACT 7.0 has a .pad file extension. ACT update 7.0.4.82 has some known problems due to issue in ACT API. We will be releasing update to migration tool that will fix this problem, and also add support for ACT 8.0 and ACT 9.0.

Migration Process

Migrating an ACT database is a two step process.

  1. Creating .BCM file from ACT! file
  2. Importing .BCM file into BCM.

These step-by-step instructions illustrate how to convert ACT data into BCM. Note that ACT application needs to be present on the machine in order to migrate because BCM uses ACT APIs to convert ACT database into .BCM file.

Creating .BCM file From ACT! Database

Step 1: The Business Data Import Export wizard is launched from File --> Import Export --> Business contact Manager for Outlook. Select "Import a File" and click Next. Select "ACT!" in the next screen.

Step 2: Click on the "Convert Data" button. This will launch "Data Conversion Tool"

Step 3: Select "ACT!" and click "Next". In the next screen, browse ACT database file that you wish to convert.

Step 4: Select the Data to import, its sub-items and click Next. Here are the conversions equivalent:

Entity in ACT
BCM equivalent Contact Business Contact
Group Account
Company Account
Product Product in Master product list
Call Phone Log
Meeting Appointment
To-do Task
Notes Business Note
E-mail Business Activity
Attachment Business Activity
Opportunity Opportunity product

Note: Not all fields from ACT are converted into BCM. Only important and frequently used fields are converted. Also, past activities are shown using the BCM Business Activity form.

Step 5: Select the user fields for the source type and click Next.

Note: In ACT 6 and lesser versions, all the user defined field types including drop down lists are converted as text fields in BCM. In ACT 7, ACT datetime fields are recognized and converted as date time in BCM. All the other user defined field types including drop down lists are converted as text fields in BCM.

Step 6: Click Next after selecting the BCM file to import the data. Remember the location of this file because you will use this file to import data into BCM.

This completes the first part of migration process.

Importing .BCM File to BCM

Launch the BCM import/export wizard from File->Import/Export->Business Contact Manager . Select "Import File" and choose "Business Contact Manager file (.bcm)" in the next screen. After that you can follow the wizard instructions to import data into BCM.