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Double spacing in addressee names

Em Siemonek

Kia ora team

I have noticed over the last wee while that when I do an export, or run a query in database view, donor addressee details show up with double spaces between first name and last name.

E.g JohnSPACESPACESmith

instead of JohnSPACESmith.

I have manually checked hundreds of these to ensure that the addressee fields do not contain these extra spaces, and they don't, so its just a really weird thing that's happening.

Anyone else experiencing this?

Its causing me to do manual clean ups for mailing lists and its really just another step I would prefer not to have to do

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Carlene Johnson

What field are you looking at? Name? Primary Addressee?

If it is Primary Addressee, I'd double check your Name Format construction just to make sure that someone didn't accidently add an extra "space" field in that Name Format.

Em Siemonek

Hi Carlene, I am looking at Addressee. I have checked our addressee and salutation settings and there are no extra spaces. The weird thing is, if I click into the donor record and look at the addressee/salutation tab, the extra space has disappeared. It only shows up in exports and in query preview. Thanks for responding so fast :)

Carlene Johnson

How frustrating! I'd reach out to support.

I vaguely remember seeing this / hearing about this but can't remember if it was here in Community or in the The Raiser's Edge Users Group Support Forum. Might be worth asking there as well.

Alex Wong

@Em Siemonek this is usually b/c you have an "invisible control" character. Not going to get into "how" it got there.

these "invisible" character usually gets "translated" to a space character. So, meaning, you have this extraneous character either at the end of the first name or at the beginning of last name. You cannot fix this in webview if I remember correctly, so you need to go into dbview, and click your cursor at the end of first name, left arrow key, if the cursor does not go before the last character in first name, then the invisible character is in first name, you will want to "back space" to delete the invisible character.

if not, then use the "home" key go get cursor at the start of last name, then right arrow key, the invisible character will make it that your cursor is not after the first character of last name, then you can delete the invisible character.

Elizabeth Johnson

I could not replicate your issue. If @Alex Wong solution doesn't work (fascinating!) Depending on what you looking at you could do a find for " " and replace with " " until this is resolved. I would reveal my hidden characters if it was in my data and then I would know better what I'm dealing with.

Em Siemonek

@Alex Wong Thank you! Thats worked. I'm just going to keep an eye out and correct them as I see them. It seems to have only started happening with new donors who give via NXT donation forms.

Thanks for your help too @Elizabeth Johnson!

Melanie Gisin

I noticed the same thing and kept looking for extra spaces in the first and last name fields. In database view, there were no spaces but when I checked the same records in RE NXT there was actually a space after first name or sometimes in front of last name (I had to click on Edit - Name to see it, otherwise it wasn't visible). It also only happened with new records so I assume that maybe the donor added the space when they filled out the online donation or registration form. Once I fixed the records in NXT, the salutations came out correct again in my database exports.

Steven Bailey

We've come across this as well, usually able to catch them in Online Data Review but sometimes they slip through. It would be nice if RE implemented a check for trailing whitespaces on the donor forms and automatically removed them.