The Contact Name field in Act is unique, as it has six components to it, which are: first name prefixes like Mr. Mrs. Dr., first name, middle name/initial, last name prefixes like Von and Van, last name, and last name suffixes like PhD. and M.D.. This is important to know, as problems can arise when you enter a contact’s name into your database. While you enter the name into a single field in your detail view, Act! automatically identifies each piece of the contact’s name using those six components.

To start, you need to create a list view with a column order that makes it easy to identify contact errors. You can do this manually, but there is no way to save this list view, meaning you have to re-create it every time you want to find and fix errors. To best find errors, you can customize your columns like I’ve done here, in order, ID Status, Contact, first middle and last name, company, etc.

There are a different kinds of common naming errors you can find, starting with contacts that have a first name and no last name. When you enter a single name by itself, Act will assume it is their last name and sort it as such. This is an easy fix, as you just can put a question mark instead of a last name, and they’ll now be corrected and sorted in you list view appropriately.

You may also run into errors will prefixes and suffixes, such as M.D., PhD, Mr, Mrs, etc. These often have user mistakes, so manually adding a missing period or deleting an extra letter will fix the name in your database. However, if you have contacts with a unique prefix or suffix, you can add it to your database to be automatically identified along with the rest.