Month: March 2012

Get your ACT! Task List Into Excel

Sometimes when I have a ton of things to get done, I don’t track all my activities in ACT!, I need a bit more of a unpolished system to sort stuff out.

Why? Well, I have a strategy for getting things done – I like to sort things by both importance and the “fun factor”. I don’t always work that way, but when I’ve got a lot to do, this helps me to:

  • Make sure the important stuff gets done
  • Get the things done first that take more effort and energy, and leave the things I enjoy to be done afterwards, when I might not otherwise have as much energy and enthusiasm

How do you sort by “Fun” you ask? Well, the answer is that you can’t do it within ACT! – but it’s an easy thing to do in Excel by adding an extra column. I won’t get into the details of how to do it, but if you know Excel you can figure it out quickly. Now to get to the point of this post – how to export your task list to Excel. As long as you have a compatible version of Microsoft Excel installed (2002 and later are supported with most recent ACT! versions), you can export your Task List in a single click!

To do it, just look for the “Export Current List to Excel” button which is on the toolbar. In ACT! 2010 it’s right above the dropdown box for the Date filter. In any version of ACT! it looks like a little box with a green X in the middle. Presto! Excel opens with your Task List, almost exactly as it was showing in ACT! when you clicked the button.

You might notice a few things from this:

  • Once the data is in Excel, you can sort and manipulate most of the data, or even do calculations.
  • The columns show up in the same order as they were in your Task List – so if you add, remove, or change the positions of columns in ACT!, you’ll get the same positioning in your Excel export.
  • The filters can be used to change what activities show up. Want a quick way to get a printable report of all the meetings you have scheduled for the rest of the month? Just change the date filter to “Current Month” and the Types to “Meeting” and click the Export button!

So there you have it – Exporting the Task List to Excel. Now that you’ve done that, check out the same feature on the Contact List and Opportunities List.