Global copy first name to last name

Rebecca Moore
Rebecca Moore
Fifth Anniversary Facilitator 1
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussions
Hi everyone,

I'm very new to RE and have been taking the webinar classes. In one class, we used global change to copy the First Name field to the Nickname field with no issues. I tried it on a small sample of constituents in our own database but got errors on all of them because of an "inactive field table entry." So I went to Config > Tables and Nickname is in there, but none of the names I was trying to enter are in there or marked invalid. Is there a setting we're missing in order to be able to globally change Nickname without this error? Or is Nickname not supposed to be a table? I can't imagine that we'd have to add every possible name to the Nickname table first...


Thank you!

Comments

  • JoAnn Strommen
    JoAnn Strommen Community All-Star
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 March 2026 Challenge: Answered Questions January 2026 Monthly Challenge
    No, IMO Nicknames is not a table. 

    What are you using for settings? I just tested with one record and it worked. Changes would be First Name / Operation Copy / Copy to Nickname.  Check overwrite box if needed.
  • Rebecca Moore
    Rebecca Moore
    Fifth Anniversary Facilitator 1

    JoAnn Strommen:

    No, IMO Nicknames is not a table. 

    What are you using for settings? I just tested with one record and it worked. Changes would be First Name / Operation Copy / Copy to Nickname.  Check overwrite box if needed.

    Hi JoAnn,

    I used First Name / Copy / Copy to Nickname and checked off the overwrite box as well. I assume if Nickname isn't supposed to be a table that this is where our problem is. Is it possible to change a field from table to a text field without affecting any data already in that field?


    Thank you!

    Rebecca

  • Alan French
    Alan French
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 Name Dropper Participant
    If you want to change it back to a text field, you'll need to go to Config > Fields > Constituent and untick the 'lookup' box next to the Nickname field. It may not let you do that if there's data currently in the field, so what you might have to do is export a list of all your constituent IDs and nicknames, do a global change to delete everything in the nickname field, change the setting in Config and then re-import the nicknames back into RE.
  • Rebecca Moore
    Rebecca Moore
    Fifth Anniversary Facilitator 1

    Alan French:

    If you want to change it back to a text field, you'll need to go to Config > Fields > Constituent and untick the 'lookup' box next to the Nickname field. It may not let you do that if there's data currently in the field, so what you might have to do is export a list of all your constituent IDs and nicknames, do a global change to delete everything in the nickname field, change the setting in Config and then re-import the nicknames back in

    Thank you!

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