Contact tabs, calendars keep change position and size

[Hank100]

I am at wits end. I have had many problems with the ACT 2008 windows, to the point that I reinstalled Windows XP2 SP2 yesterday and started all over again.

I'm using a Dell XPS 410, running Windows XP SP2. I have 3gb of memory, with an Intel dual core processor. I have no problems with any othe programs.

The problem is that when I start ACT! 2008 for the first time, on a freshly installed OS, the tabs in the contact window don't show. So I go to USPreferences.xml and change the contactdetailssplitterpos to 200. I then open ACT and the tabs show. I close ACT and open it again, and the tabs have moved down. Each time I start ACT, the tabs are lower, until they disappear.

I have reduced the display hardware acceleration, but that doesn't seem to make any difference.

In addition, the various calendar views are very narrow. When I move the calendar windows to make them wider, and restart ACT, the windows are either narrower, or--in the case of the monthly calendar--it has changed to what looks like, but isn't, the mini calendar. I click on Monthly calendar and it remains a number of small calendars across the top of the window, looking like an expanded mini calendar. I have to delete the Preferences using actdialog.exe. But when I start ACT clean again, I get the same problems.

I've spent 2 days trying to get ACT 2008 to work properly in terms of windows settings. It seems that the settings aren't saved when I close ACT and then start it again. And I don't understand the various calendar display problems described above.

Do you have any idea how I can solve these problems.

 

[Hank100]

One more piece of information. My screen resolution is set to 96 dpi.

 

[Hank100]

I just checked the preferencesBak.xml. Each time I close ACT 2008, the contactdetailsplitter data number increases y itself. I started it at 200, and then it went up and up each time I shut down ACT. The last 2 times, preferencesBak.xml showed that contactsplitter data was 564, and the next time 696.

I publish software, and when a program closes, it saves the size and position of the windows, so the user will see the same positioning when the program starts again--as you well know. I've never seen a preferences file change height, width of windows or objects, unless the user changed them while the program was running and then exited the program.

To say I am baffled is an understatement Also, bear in mind, this happens to the width of the calendars as well as the height of the tabs. In fact, the calendar can get so narrow, after opening and closing the program several times, that there isn't enough room to enter any data in the daily calendar, and the weekly and monthly calendars allow no space for the information to display!

By the way, I updated the drivers for my video card a few hours ago, thinking that might solve the problem, but it made no difference.

Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[GLComputing]

Editing the preferences XML file will usually cause issues.

Try using ACTDIAG to delete the preferences, open ACT! and let us know what happens then

Regards,
Mike Lazarus
ACT! Evangelist
GL Computing, Aust

http://www.GLComputing.com.au

 

[acmq]

Did you ever find a solution to this. I have the same issue with Act 2007.

 

[Hank100]

I have a complete answer to this question, after speaking to ACT! tech support last month:

HOW TO FIX PREFERENCES IN ACT 2008
As explained by ACT tech support

This should work for ACT! 2007 as well

1. Right click on the Desktop and choose Properties.
2. Click on Settings, then click on Advanced.
3. Make sure that 96 dpi is chosen. (Shirley got control of my computer, did the above and said she changed the dip from 120 to 96. I told her that it was already 96. She said it wasn’t. I asked her how I could see 96 dpi when she saw 120 dpi. She didn’t know the answer to that. If the problem occurs again, I’ll set the dpi to 120, and then set it back to 96 dpi.)
4. When it asks whether you want to reboot the computer click No and close the windows.
5. Restart the computer (I’m not sure this is necessary. Try all the following steps without restarting the computer. If it doesn’t fix the problem, go through 1-4 and restart the computer, then when it restarts, begin with steps 6-12).
6. Go to c:\document and settings\Hank Lefcort\Applications\ACT\ACT for Windows 10\
7. Rename the Preferences folder to Preferencesold (or put any characters after the word Preferences.
8. Open the Preferences folder (now renamed), and delete preferencesBak.xml, and any versions with that file name or any file that starts with that filename, such as preferencesBak.xmlold.
9. Go to c:\Program files\ACT\ACT for Windows.
10. Double click on ActDiag.exe
11. Go to the Tools menu and choose Delete preferences.
12. Restart ACT and everything will be correct.
13. If this doesn’t work, go back to 6-11 and then restart the computer. Then, when the computer restarts, start ACT and everything will be OK.

This worked for me. I hope it works for you. Please let me know. Happy holidays. Hank

 

[GLComputing]

There's also a Preference tool in the act.com knowledge base for a problem that happened with ACT! 9.0 losing it's prefernces. You should also apply Hotfix3 (also in the knowledge base)

Regards,
Mike Lazarus
ACT! Evangelist
GL Computing, Aust

http://www.GLComputing.com.au

 

[acmq]

Thanks for the detailed reply Hank100.

Changing the DPI to 92 fixes the problem through I would prefer to keep it set to 120DPI. I have used this setting for a number of years and never had any problems with other software.