Export Tips And Tricks

Published

When I was a Raiser's Edge DBA, export was a tool I used a lot to build mail merges, build custom reports, and temporarily get data out of Raiser's Edge. There are a number of ways to tweak an export template to ensure you get your desired output.

I've compiled some tip and timesavers that I want to share:

Pay attention to the export format you select. Use "Blackbaud Report Writer Database" for custom reports, "Blackbaud Simple/Conditional Merge" for mail merging, and "Comma Separated Values" (CSV) and/or "Excel x" for pretty much everything else.
This can't be overstated: if you don't include a query on the general tab, you WILL export all records from your database. Luckily you can easily cancel exports should you start exporting your entire database.
Be on the lookout for the format and criteria buttons to "light up" (activate) at the bottom of the selected fields grid. These buttons activate additional options and really help to filter and sort your exported data.
You can include fields more than once in an export. I've seen lots of organizations take advantage of this, by creating gift amount ask ladders, properly export phone numbers and emails (one per column), etc.
Bonus housekeeping note: keep your exports organized within the folder structure, and clean up old exports 1-2x per year.

Want more tips? I'm leading an interactive webinar called 30-Minute Tips & Timesavers on March 21st at 1pm ET where you can learn more from me and other Raiser's Edge users.

News Raiser's Edge® Blog 03/19/2018 11:30am EDT

Added by Chris Geady

18 Comments

Chris Geady May '19

@Tina Yes!

Tina Betlejewski Apr '19

Can additional folders be added to assist with clean up of old exports?

Kristine Marvin Mar '19

I did not know you could include gift amount ask ladders. I am going to need to do some more research on this topic. Thanks for the great advice.

Sarah White Mar '19

I love exports! Thanks for these reminders.

Kelly Hogan Mar '19

I love the reminder to include a query. Sometimes in our rush to get things done, we discover we just did something very silly!

Lynn Jones Mar '19

Great tips!

Rebecca McKinney Mar '19

We were just talking about this today and the difference between the Export feature versus the export button on the query.

Chris Geady Apr '18

@Joan love love love using export for record counts! Thanks for the tip/comment!

Joan Perry Apr '18

Sorry to have missed the webinar...look forward to the recording.
i use export a lot for segmenting our data and we export a lot of fields. It’s helpful we can export in newer Excel versions that allow for more fields. Often I still export data as CSV and import into Excel if I am worried about record nd field counts. However, as an East Coast organization, I always have to remember to format zip codes when importing CSV files or we wind up with 4-digit zip codes (oops!)

Chris Geady Apr '18

@Crystal funny how that happens to the best of us! Happy for a working cancel button!

Crystal Chouinard Apr '18

It is funny in all my years of using RE I have never forgotten to include a query in my export.....until yesterday. I kept wondering why my export was taking so long and was getting scared about how big the file was, I am working on data clean-up. Then a lightbulb went off and I realized I didn't select my query.

Chris Geady Mar '18

You're welcome @Bonnie!

Bonnie Onken Mar '18

Thanks Chris,
All great tips, most of which I alredy use.
Bonnie Onken
Mayfield Junior School

Chris Geady Mar '18

Thank you to everyone that attended today's webinar. I've posted my responses to all of the unanswered questions from today here:

https://community.blackbaud.com/events/item/2/1891

Chris Geady Mar '18

Hi Debra, we won't be covering this bug at this point. Support is the best team to address any updates.

Debra Holcomb Mar '18

Question: Will you address export in Queue? Since we upgraded to RE7.96 (latest patch), we can't export from existing Queues to Excel nor can we build new csv or xlsx queues. I've reported the bug, it's been video recorded by Blackbaud Support, but I haven't heard when it might be fixed. Will you offer any work arounds for those of us relying on Queue to do Exports in excel or csv?

Chris Geady Mar '18

Hi Steve, the "Blackbaud Simple/Conditional Merge" format (vs. Excel) performs the mail merge directly from Raiser's Edge, without the need to export to Excel and then do the mail merge. This extra step introduces risk for potential data manipulation and human error. If this isn't a big deal to you and/or your organization, there's not much difference other than the extra step.
Cheers,
Chris

Steve Townsend Mar '18

Is it better to use "Blackbaud Simple/Conditional Merge" for mail merging? I use "Excel x" and that seems to work fine with Word.