I was just writing this e-mail back to someone who e-mailed me and I decided to blog it.

- Is there a way to timestamp notes in Outlook by itself, or is the only way to get Business Contacts Manager?

Everything in outlook has a timestamp, but obviously BCM has better facilities. You could write a short piece of VBA to add a time stamp button to the Notes form

- Are the contacts stored in Outlook 2007 the same as those contacts stored in BCM or are they stored completely differently?

Outlook contacts are stored in a PST file while BCM contacts are stored in a SQL database. To see the differences between the fields in contacts in BCM and Outlook, have a look at http://uksbsguy.com/blogs/doverton/archive/2007/05/04/what-is-the-difference-between-an-outlook-contact-and-a-business-contact-manager-bcm-in-office-2007-contact.aspx

- If the contacts are different, will other third party programs like Plaxo be able to update files based on BCM or only the Outlook contacts?

It depends on how they are accessed – you would need to talk to the 3^rd party vendor

- Are there any good sources of training on BCM 2007 from MS or from third parties like the BCM for Dummies or BCM for idiots? Other sources of good info?

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/002-9623379-7360062?initialSearch=1&url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=business+contact+manager

- And finally if I migrate 3500 contacts from ACT to BCM are there problems with the import or can third party programs assist? I heard there were issues like only 800 contacts can be imported and all the timestamps in ACT will be lost when history records are imported?

I think this is not true, but I’ve not got ACT to find out. The import can hit problems if you are not based in the US as time records get screwed up, but exporting to CSV file, loading in Excel and then importing seems to work.

ttfn

David