Letters and WordVBS

Melissa Duffy
Melissa Duffy
Third Anniversary Name Dropper Participant Facilitator 1
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussions

Hello! I am wanting to use Letters in Database View to automate my Gift Thank you letters that don't go out via e-mail. When trying to set up the Blackbaud Word Merge export, it tells me I need Word 2000 or later, which I have on my Mac….I saw that I needed WordVBS.exe to integrate the two, but then got an error saying WordVBS won't work on a Mac. Is there any way around this? I send out a lot of letters and would love to have this automated. TIA!

Comments

  • Austen Brown
    Austen Brown Community All-Star
    Ninth Anniversary Kudos 5 PowerUp Challenge: Product Update Briefing Feedback Task 3 bbcon 2025 Attendee Badge

    @Melissa Duffy - Is your RE database self hosted, or are you hosted by Blackbaud?

  • Christine Robertson
    Christine Robertson Community All-Star
    Kudos 5 Name Dropper Participant First Anniversary

    @Melissa Duffy If your system is self-hosted, you might be able to do this in database view (though I am not at all an expert on Macs to help with that!), but it wouldn't exactly be automated. The process could be simplified, but someone would still have to initiate the process, review/print the letters and also the envelopes.

    If you are in RE NXT, you may also want to look at Letterbox from RedArc (@Henrietta Hawkins) or options in PowerAutomate (@Austen Brown is an expert on that!).

  • Melissa Duffy
    Melissa Duffy
    Third Anniversary Name Dropper Participant Facilitator 1

    @Austen Brown
    I believe hosted by Blackbaud, as we have Raiser's Edge and use Citrix.

  • Austen Brown
    Austen Brown Community All-Star
    Ninth Anniversary Kudos 5 PowerUp Challenge: Product Update Briefing Feedback Task 3 bbcon 2025 Attendee Badge

    @Melissa Duffy - If you're hosted, it is no longer possible to merge letters directly within Database View. You have a couple options though,

    1. You can merge them manually through a desktop word application after exporting the data from RE.

    2. Utilize Power Automate to run letters automatically for you. If you're interested in this option but don't want to learn/build these yourself, check out AutomateGenius.

    3. Utilize a Third Party application like RedArc's Letter Box or DonorTek's ReceipterPro.

  • Melissa Duffy
    Melissa Duffy
    Third Anniversary Name Dropper Participant Facilitator 1

    @Austen Brown Thank you! I will check out these options! Appreciate the help!

  • Melissa Duffy
    Melissa Duffy
    Third Anniversary Name Dropper Participant Facilitator 1

    @Christine Robertson Thanks for the response! I will check out all the options!

  • Karen Diener
    Karen Diener Community All-Star
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 First Reply Name Dropper

    @Melissa Duffy:

    Hello! I am wanting to use Letters in Database View to automate my Gift Thank you letters that don't go out via e-mail. When trying to set up the Blackbaud Word Merge export, it tells me I need Word 2000 or later, which I have on my Mac….I saw that I needed WordVBS.exe to integrate the two, but then got an error saying WordVBS won't work on a Mac. Is there any way around this? I send out a lot of letters and would love to have this automated. TIA!

    You can also export data from the Donor Ackowledgement process into a CSV file and do a merge completely outside of Raiser's Edge. Just use the process to generate the data for the merge and ideally marking the gift records as “acknowledged". I've moved all of my clients to this process, since they are not interested or staffed highly enough for other options.

    Karen

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