Creating Queries From Excel Files Done Easily!

Being a mother of two children under the age of three can be quite daunting at times. To keep me sane, I write To-Do lists. If I didn’t write down to tie my shoes, it probably wouldn’t get done! I often catch myself writing lists, scratching through items, removing or adding items constantly. It’s always changing to what I need at that moment in time and helps group together what I need to get done for the day.

In The Raiser’s Edge, Query can be a powerful tool that can group together constituents that we will need for a list; a mailing list, an event invitation list, or a list for the Spring Appeal.  You can create a query one day for a mailing list and export this list.  Many times, we find ourselves scratching through constituents and removing them from the list or add whole new groups after a colleague may review the list or the needs change completely.

Once we get our final group, what to do with them? How will we get this finalized group into a query? We need a query of these constituents so we can create a final mailing list or globally add an appeal to their records. How can I take this Excel file of constituents and get them into a query?

There are two extremely helpful tricks that will be a life saver to you and your organization.

First, The Raiser’s Edge has the ability to use query criteria and the operator ‘One of’ to copy and paste criteria into a new query. There is one restriction with this method in that the copy and paste method can only work up to 500 records at a time.

Take your spreadsheet of IDs (Constituent ID works the best!) and copy these IDs. In your query criteria, select the filter for Constituent ID with the operator being ‘one of’. A values grid will open, and you will simply need to scroll to the bottom of this grid and click in the last row. Use your keyboard and paste the IDs into the grid, press Ctrl + V. Don’t panic, you will not see anything paste into the grid. Simply click Ok, and you will be returned to the main criteria tab of the query, and your newly pasted IDs will all show under your filter. Instant final list grouped together in one query! This is a lifesaving trick that is easy to use and will save you so much time!

Here's a link to the knowledgebase solution that will help with these steps: How To Copy and Past Multiple Values At the Same Time Into A Query Using the One of Operator.

Now, if you find that your final list is greater than 500 people, you can create a query using the Import module. Imports can often seem scary, but all you need is one column in your import file, one column of your IDs, again Constituent IDs will work perfectly!

Save your Constituent IDs in a CSV file. Next step is to create a new constituent import. What do you want to do? In this case, we will be selecting to update existing records. The only other step is to select to create an output query of records changed on the Summary Tab. ‘Import’ your changes and the end result will be a new query of records of your Final constituent list! Again, this is a time savor and will be an easy way to group your constituents in a final query.

Check out this link to the knowledgebase solution that will assist you with this process: How To Create a Query from an Excel list of Constituents or Import IDs. (includes demo).

We live a world where time is money. Let’s save some money and time by using these two simple tricks in order to create your next list. Once you have completed these tricks, it will be one less task to scratch off your To-Do list for today.

For more information on modifying queries to include and exclude certain constituents, search Training Central using the keywords Query List.