• From within Outlook's Help menu, select About Microsoft Outlook;
• Click the disabled items button;
• There may be a number of items listed. You're looking for items with names ending in ACTEXT.DLL or ACTAB32.DLL;
• Make sure they're enabled;
• Click OK until you're back in Outlook and then restart both Outlook and ACT!

That worked for us and the toolbar was now showing up. By the way, the best setting we found on the toolbar was "Subject+Message Text." This informed ACT! that we wanted to grab the plain text value of the message as well as the subject and paste it into ACT! I don't recommend the "Attach entire e-mail" option, because if you decide to move your ACT! database or reinstall, getting the attachments to hook back up could well be a challenge.

Speaking of a challenge, we soon found we had another.

You must run ACT! at least once before you use this function
When we relaunched Outlook, we started to get a message that was very confusing. An alert dialog box came up with the following message:

"You must run ACT! at least once before you use this function."

Of course, ACT! was already running. So we quit ACT! and restarted. No luck. The we closed Outlook and ACT! and restarted both. No joy. So we rebooted. Despite the universal fixit nature of a reboot, the message was still showing up.

Finally, we decided to use the ACT! knowledge base.

It suggested two solutions: reinstall ACT! or hack the registry. I did not want to reinstall ACT!

"Warning! Registry hacking is dangerous and can completely zorch your machine."

If you've never done registry hacking before, now is not the time to start. Take these instructions and find a geek friend who is very comfortable with using the registry. This means that if your friend nukes your machine, at least there's a good chance he'll know how to do a reinstall.

Registry hacking is dangerous. It can ruin your whole day.

Have we warned you enough? Do you fully understand that if you turn your PC into a pile of slag, you can't come running to us? Do you have a backup?

OK, so now I'm talking solely to those geeks who understand the concept of a registry key. In RegEdit, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Symantec\ACT! You're looking for an entry entitled Email Root Folder File Type. Its value should be a file path. Copy that file path; you'll need it in a minute.

Now look for an entry named Email File Type. It's probably not going to be there.

If it is, well, you're screwed. Reinstall ACT!

But if it's not there, create the entry. Make sure you get the capitalization EXACTLY right. Once you do, set the value to the path you just copied.

Exit RegEdit, restart Windows, and then relaunch ACT! and Outlook. You should be golden.

ACT! and Outlook integration in ACT! 2005
We don't have details yet, but the upcoming ACT! 2005 claims to have even tighter ACT! and Outlook integration. As soon as we get it in, we'll give it a go and let you know what we learn.

Product availability and resources For more information on solving the toolbar problem, visit http://itdomino.act.com/act.nsf/docid/2002718165348. For more information on solving the "You must run ACT! at least once before you use this function." problem, visit http://itdomino.act.com/act.nsf/docid/2002102114506.

Diane Poremsky is the president of CDOLive LLC and a Microsoft Outlook MVP. She's author of Teach Yourself Outlook 2003 in 24 Hours (Sam's, 2003) and coauthor of OneNote 2003 for Windows (Visual QuickStart Guide). For questions or suggestions for future columns, write her at outlook@cdolive.com.