After another unwelcome trip into the land of Microsoft … I had difficulty finding BCM V2 for download. I’m not sure why my BRAND NEW copy of Business Contact Manager (which is a part of Microsoft Office Small Business Edition 2003) was shipped with version 1, but that’s beside the point.

Searching on MS’s site did little to help me find the update, but I did find a link to it after searching around the user groups a bit.

With all the issues that BCM has, it’s amazing that the upgrade (reportedly effective for fixing many of those bugs) isn’t easier to find.

It also permits the “integration” of BCM with Small Business Accounting 6.0 (SBA 6). I’ve not managed to get that far quite yet, but I’m hoping it will work.

Download the BCM V2.0 here.

Hope this helps shorten your search time.

And here’s a link to the FAQ page about this update:

http://www.microsoft.com/office/outlook/contactmanager/prodinfo/faq.mspx

While working to get my Outlook 2003, my Business Contact Manager and my Microsoft Office Small Business Accounting 2006 programs all chummy and happy with each other (without pulling out the few sprigs of hair that remain in my head)…

a terrible thing happened.

I closed the Business Contact Manager add-in for Outlook 2003 and couldn’t figure out how to reopen it…

By right clicking on the Business Contact Manager Mail Folder Icon under “All Mail Folders” in the option to Close the Business Contact Manager appears. I, of course, must test this option. So BCM closes. Now, I just try to reopen it. Sounds simple, eh? To reopen something you closed? Simple. Intuitive… especially for someone as familiar with the MS suite of products as I am.

It’s not simple. It probably took me 10 minutes of poking around before I found out how to reopen it. And, since I “fell” into the answer, I had to close it again and go back and search a second time to be able to document it for anyone else out there that’s similarly stuck.

I have the Microsoft Outlook “bible” called Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 Inside Out (which I’m reading at the same speed a turtle would achieve while attempting to sprint through an inch-deep lake of peanut butter) but couldn’t find the answer there.

I also searched online in the MS Knowledge Base and Googled it. No luck.

So, if you had a moment of sanity lapse wherein you turned off your BCM and now need to turn yours back on…

Go to File->New->Outlook Data File

and then select “Use an existing database” and select your Business Contact Manager (be sure NOT to select the “Create a New Database”).

There. NOW it’s simple!