Contacts database, has envelope address printout and modem contact dialing options.
The first great Mac name-and-address keeper was QuickDex, a small, blazingly fast, tree-form database program. Since QuickDex's debut three years ago, we've seen a few good envelope primers with address-book facilities built in (Easy Envelopes, Kiwi Envelopes, and Fast-Envelopes), and some excellent address-book programs (DynoDex, AddressBook Plus, MacPhoneBook), We haven't, however, seen the blazingly fast name-and-address keeper that would improve on QuickDex.
The Challenger
The DA Intouch, from Advanced Software (its other product is DocuComp), competes directly with QuickDex. It gives away a little in speed but adds a lot in features. Unlike address-book programs with their multiplicity of fields. Intouch has only two data fields per record — a name-and-address field and a notes field in which you store phone numbers and anything else you wish. The notes field can hold up to 32K of information.
Printing abilities are built in. The search-for box is also always available. Just type in your request, and press Return. In fact, the search-string box is one of the three fields to which tabbing through a record takes you (address, then notes, then search).
You enter data into the two data fields separately. In touch uses the entire first field, exactly as you've entered it, for printing envelopes and labels. The arrangement of data in the second field is up to you. Searches, which are very fast, look through everything in the data fields and find things no matter where you've tucked them.
The Snapshot button is a nice feature. It either copies the current address field into the Clipboard or pastes the contents of the Clipboard into the address field if that field is blank. The notes field can be zoomed to lake up the whole active window: doing so produces a time-and-date-stamp button at the bottom of the window.
The search functions opt for speed over complexity. You enter a simple ASCII string, and that's what you search for: no multiple criteria, no Booleans. The Dial button dials the first number in the notes field. If you warn to dial another number you must place the cursor directly before it.
Intouch’s printing capabilities are numerous. You can build custom layouts for envelopes or arrangements of labels as well as use the built-in selection of basic envelope and label layouts. Barcodes and FIMs (facing identification marks) can be generated on envelopes (except on DeskWriter printers, where the smaller active print area doesn't allow room for bar codes). Return addresses can have graphics embedded, and the program can store up to ten different return addresses. The printing can be in any typeface and size that His, You can add messages to the lower left corner of envelopes. Finally, the Print Preview button gives you a look at what you're about to print.
A Challenge Well Met
Intouch works very well. With more than a thousand records in my file, some with extensive note fields, performance is more than adequate. It's not as fast as QuickDex, but it's not so slow as to make me long for QuickDex, The interface is attractive and intuitive.
The phone-dialing capabilities of In touch are more than adequate. All the features users have come to expect are there: automatic prefixes and suffixes, skipping of area codes for local calls, special dialing-command strings, and the ability to use either the speaker or a modem.
Intouch can import QuickDex and tab-delimited ASCII-text files. It handled my large, messy QuickDex file quickly and well, requiring minimal cleanup after the import. Exporting options are much broader, with 19 formats built in. The export formats cover tab-delimited ASCII and those of all the major database programs and word processors — yes. Word, Excel, and 4D are there. You're sure to find something useful in the list. You can export jusl names and addresses or entire records.
The two major drawbacks are the size of the working window, which is on the small side and fixed, and the 9-point type used in the window. I'd really appreciate a resizable window and the ability to select a different typeface and size for display.
The navigational controls above the address and notes fields take up too much space, especially as they're not very useful. Records are not sorted into any particular order (they're kept in the order entered), so there's usually no reason to scroll through a big file, record by record.
The Bottom Line
Intouch is currently the best pure name-and-address keeper for the Mac. It isn't an address-book printer but a screen program with good one-shot printing ability. Searching is last, data entry is simple, and it has no glaring flaws or bugs. I use it for names and phone numbers and, thanks to the free-form notes field and time-stamp button, as a contact history. Other users will find it helpful for doing simple project-tracking chores.
In a crowded market, the simplicity and power of Intouch make it stand out. It's a worthy successor to the old QuickDex 1.4.
Bobker, Steven. (April 1991). Intouch. MacUser. (pg. 60).
INtouch
Advanced Software, Inc.
Applications
out of 10 (1 vote)
5 / 
2020-04-01 / 
8666124216e08e2d9759a8cb0f0a1b1a4f8dcc3b / 
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INtouch1-1.6.sit
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Basilisk II
