Did you know you can export your entire Basecamp project space into an XML file? This is a great personal reassurance feature of BaseCamp. You can at any time pull everything you have put into Basecamp back out into a transportable format. (Well, not everything—not uploaded documents—but definitely everything else.) Go to “Account” and scroll down to “Need to export your data.”

What can you do with all this stuff once you have exported it?

If you use Basecamp and also work with Microsoft Access or SQL Server, ThickToast from www.vb123.com offers a great, low cost tool. We have used the utility to pull the XML data into a standard Microsoft Access database.  The directions are simple and the process fast. Once done, you have companies, contacts, messages, to-dos and so on all laid out in standard tables with full relational structure. The database includes sample browse forms to look up projects and see the information in an Access view, and then a link to open the project back up from the web.

The ThickToast tools offer a great way to tie Basecamp info with your standard contact management system or with other project management or billing tools.