You should always back up everything no matter what program you are using. Especially customer databases. David Love www.davidlovepianos.com From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Michael Magness Sent: Tuesday, March 03, 2009 7:13 AM To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: Re: [pianotech] Database for Piano Business On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 8:24 AM, Ron Nossaman <rnossaman at cox.net> wrote: Access is a database program but Outlook has a "contacts" section that provides a number of different fields (and you can customize it as well) into which you can input and organize customer or "contact" information. It's evolved into something quite a bit more powerful than just an email program. David Love Ah, yet another of the infinite holes in my education. I haven't used Outlook, and didn't know that. Thanks for the clarification. Ron N I have used Outlook but NEVER will again. I was well into inputting customer names and data into it plus using it as the dedicated e-mail program for my website e-mail. I came home one day and clicked the icon to open it and have never seen my data since! I tried everything, including a 6 hour phone conference with Microsoft, only to be told ultimately they didn't know what else to try. It was somehow corrupted and would not reopen. When I began researching it I found I was not only not alone, this is apparantly a common thing. For those of you using it I would strongly suggest downloading to disc or backing up on an external harddrive or site periodically. I have not been that impressed with many of microsoft's office products. I currently use openoffice.org a freeware program which is compatible with the office suite but much less ridgid. I'll be the first to admit I'm not "all that" when it comes to computers. I prefer programs that don't have instructions that take months sometimes years to wade through. I have enough on my plate without learning to be a computer programmer! (g) Mike -- I intend to live forever. So far, so good. Steven Wright Michael Magness Magness Piano Service 608-786-4404 www.IFixPianos.com email mike at ifixpianos.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech_ptg.org/attachments/20090303/6c837227/attachment-0001.html>
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC