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memorial acknowledgement letters

Jennifer Rohrig

Figured out the mail merge for our receipt letters, yay… my next task is figuring out how we're going to handle doing the memorial acknowledgement letters. We used RE to create those so each recipient had a list of donors in memory of their family member. Is there a way to do that with just word without having to do a mail merge for each recipient. One spread sheet of all the memorial donations with the recipients so some sort of “if recipient = x, then create this letter with these donors” - formula. Does that exist in word?

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Austen Brown

Hi @Jennifer Rohrig - This is possible! You will need to create a Master Conditional Merge document, that contains if/then/else conditional statements that do exactly as you describe - "if [field] equals x, then do y, else z".

Blackbaud has put together a helpful tutorial on how to build a conditional merge document, I recommend you watch that first. There are quite a few posts about setting up conditional merge documents, tips/tricks, etc. - I've linked a few below.

YouTube Tutorial for Setting Up a Multi-Conditional Merge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro86FSjcQYU
Having Conditional Merge Issues? Try These Steps: https://community.blackbaud.com/forums/viewtopic/158/58196
Conditional Mail Merge Help: https://community.blackbaud.com/forums/viewtopic/158/58310

As you get started with this, there are two keyboard shortcuts directly related to conditional statements in Microsoft Word that will come in handy:

Alt + F9 = View Field Codes (shows hidden conditional statements in a Word doc)
Ctrl + F9 = Insert Field Characters (adds the specific merge brackets to your doc, that you will need to customize if/then/else conditional statements)

If this is all a bit too much, you can also do a simple merge - where you take the template letter originally stored in RE, and merge directly to the template with your export file. If you have more than on letter type, this could take some time to work through, but it would require far less work from you upfront.

Jennifer Rohrig

Thank you Austen,

Yes that's part of what I need - I might be trying something to complex for what Word can actually do. I found the right query we were using that puts all the data in one row for the merge so now that makes more sense knowing what RE was doing with the memorial acknowledgment letters.

I was hoping there was a way to do it a little differently where it could do a larger if than statement that would link a recipient to a group of donors that need to be put into the document for each recipient. But I'm guessing that's not possible with just Word unless everything is all in one row.

Jennifer Rohrig

Actually the other problem is that due to a misunderstanding of what was happening with Word I never saved our templates… is there a guide to creating letter templates I can review?

Kylee Hamilton

Hi Jennifer!

Are you using the tribute module and the honour/memorial mail acknowledgment?

If yes I just built a Next of Kin notification merge to include a condolences letter to the NOK and the second page includes a list of all donations received in their loved ones memory.

Is this similar to what you're looking for?

Austen Brown

@Jennifer Rohrig - You can still download all your templates that were previously accessible through parameter files in Mail. All you need to do is open Database View, click on Tools on the top menu and then “Word Merge Document Exporter” - name the file and choose a location to save it on your computer. When you open the zip file it will be arranged by letter location, then parameter file.

Jennifer Kluh

Thank you Austen for these instructions

Jennifer Rohrig

Austen Brown:
@Jennifer Rohrig - You can still download all your templates that were previously accessible through parameter files in Mail. All you need to do is open Database View, click on Tools on the top menu and then “Word Merge Document Exporter” - name the file and choose a location to save it on your computer. When you open the zip file it will be arranged by letter location, then parameter file.

Thank you I will see if I can figure that out. We're using RE not RE NXT so I don't know if that's a difference…

Jennifer Rohrig

Kylee Hamilton:
Hi Jennifer!
Are you using the tribute module and the honour/memorial mail acknowledgment?
If yes I just built a Next of Kin notification merge to include a condolences letter to the NOK and the second page includes a list of all donations received in their loved ones memory.
Is this similar to what you're looking for?

Yes – The issue I'm having is the repetition of having to add each donor information one at a time. I'm not sure if I should be able to set up the template once to do that for me or I will actually have to re-select each item over and over for the many donors going into the letter…

Danielle Lifshitz

I used the youtube to set up my conditional mail merge and in general it works, but the formatting is off. Any suggestions how to keep the format from the original letter?

Jenny Marquardt

We unchecked the box for Preserve formatting or something like that and it works perfect for us now.

Danielle Lifshitz

I will try that, any idea where that box is located?

Jenny Marquardt

When you edit the field.

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Danielle Lifshitz

It's already unchecked so I don't think thats it. But thank you!