QuickBooks 2005: The Missing Manual

Synchronizing Contacts

If you keep information about contacts in Microsoft Outlook or Act!, you can synchronize those records with your QuickBooks contact data. Regardless of whether you use QuickBooks or your contact program to keep your records up to date, you can transfer any changes to the other database.

Note

Synchronizing with QuickBooks works if you use ACT!3.0.8, 4.0.2, orInteract 2000. You can synchronize any version of Microsoft Outlook from 97 through 2002. If you use Outlook Express or, for now, Outlook 2003, you're out of luck.

Setting Up Contacts in Outlook or Act!

QuickBooks needs some help choosing the contacts in Outlook or Act! that you want to synchronize and determining which type they are. Once you've synchronized the two databases, you can't move a contact to a different category, so before you try to transfer data, open Outlook or Act! and identify each contact as a type of QuickBooks name (Customer, Vendor, Employee, or Other Name). The categories in the programs don't match up exactly. You must add each contact to one of the following categories:

• QB Customer

• QB Vendor

• QB Other

• QB Ignore

Note

If you don't want to synchronize a name, choose the QB Ignore category.

Here's what you have to do to assign a contact to a QuickBooks category:

• Outlook. Edit the contact. In the Contact window, in the Categories box, type the appropriate QuickBooks category, as shown in Figure 21-3.

  Figure 21-3. If the Categories field already contains one or more categories, type ...