Working with ACTPR

To recover passwords to files created in older versions of ACT! (from Symantec), press Open file... button on toolbar and select Symantec ACT! menu item, then browse for *.blb or *.mud files you want to get the password(s) for; alternatively, you can drag ACT! file from Explorer and drop it into the ACTPR window). If the given file is corrupted, or used by another application, or no passwords are there � appropriate error message will be displayed. Otherwise, the program will print a list of all users that have the rights to access that file, along with there passwords and security levels/roles (examples: Administrator, Standard, Manager, Browse, Restricted). Here you can highlight the account you need, and press Copy password button at the bottom; password for selected account will be copied into the clipboard, so you can paste it into ACT using Ctrl+V or Shift+Ins button. That might be useful if password is not "printable", i.e. cannot be shown/entered using current character set or keyboard layout. Or press Change Level button to just change the security level for the selected user.

ACT! 2005..2010 (from Best Software/Sage) are based on Microsoft SQL Server Engine, and the encryption is much stronger there: passwords cannot be recovered instantly. However, they can be changed or removed. ACTPR provides two ways doing that: through ACT! itself (more exactly, via MSSQL ODBC drivers used by ACT!), and directly. In order to use the first method, you should have appropriate version of ACT! installed on the local machine, while the *.adf file can be accessed remotely; the second method works even without ACT! , but does not allow to change the security roles.

With the first method, press Open file..., select ACT 2005-2010 ODBC menu item and browse for *.adf file (ACT! database itself) or *.pad file (that one contains information about ACT! database which may be located on the other computer in the local network). ACTPR shows (like for older versions of ACT!) the list of users with their security roles. Highlight the one you want to change the password for, press Change password button, and enter new password for that user (empty one means that the password will be removed); here you can also change the security role of the selected user.

If you are going to process (with ACTPR) the ACT! database on the computer other than one this database has been accessed the last time at, it is recommended to open it on this (new) computer in ACT! itself first. Don't worry that the password is not known. Simply wait till ACT! asks for password and press Cancel -- so the ACT! will make some changes to configuration files. Now open the database in ACTPR to change the password(s). Otherwise (if you have not opened the database at the new computer before using ACTPR), the program might be confused where the actual database file is located, and so don't work properly.

With the second method, select ACT 2005-2010 Direct menu item and browse for *.adf file (ACT! database itself). If the file is locked by ACT!, ACTPR allows to stop the SQL service -- without that, the file cannot be accessed/unlocked. Then, the program works almost exactly as with the previous method, but just does not allow you to select the new password (for selected user) yourself; instead, it generates the new password by itself.

Please also note that if you work with ACT! 2005..2010 and change the password to any user, the new passwords is always being converted to the lowercase for compatibility with ACT! 2005 (where the passwords are not case-sensitive), while it is not possible to determine what version of ACT! is used. Also, after changing the password, ACT! will accept it at the first time when you log on to ACT! with that (new) password, but may ask to change it according to the password policy set (which ACTPR does not care about).

Finally, ACT! (most versions) may save the password (last one you used to open the file) in system Registry. ACTPR can extract and decrypt it from there: simply press the Check Registry button on program toolbar. If last password has been saved, it will be shown.