Now we're losing letters?!

Beverly Porzelt:

Thank you, but my problem is with foreign addresses. They have different formats, rather than city state zip.

Most of our foreign are Canada and a couple UK so it's not too much of an issue… but it sounds like you may have to export Address_Block vs. individual address lines and CSZ. Experiment!

My thought exactly, from MS gounging BB to how BB gouges us.

Beverly Porzelt:

Does anyone know how to get around the address block issue? We use foreign addresses mixed with US. I cannot imagine formatting all the foreign addresses ourselves, especially in a merge document. Plus “fixing” every address. I hope I'm missing something!

Hi Beverly, while I haven't tried it yet to see if it works, my account manager just sent me this fix:

Our product team just posted this awesome solution (it will be added to the knowledgebase shortly)- can you please let me know if this works for you:

If anyone uses the merge field Address_Block

in their RE letters (vs. individual address fields like Address_line_1, City, State, Zip_Code), you may need to update your desktop templates to either use the individual address fields or use the Address Block from within the desktop version of Word. I did the latter for one of my clients. See below.

This is from an acknowledgment letter created within RE using Address_Block. Looks good.

ABC Trust

101 Main St

Anywhere, PA 12345

This is from an acknowledgment letter created from the desktop version of Word using the template generated from RE (with the Address_Block merge field):

ABC Trust

101 Main St Anywhere, PA 12345

You can see that the Address Line, City, State, and Zip all ended up on one line using the desktop version of Word.

I deleted the Address_Block merge field from the template generated from RE and added the Address Block from the desktop version of Word.

These options worked for my client's purposes:

Now the address (using the desktop Word template) appears like it did on the letters created within RE. The address elements are on separate lines when they should be.

ABC Trust

101 Main St

Anywhere, PA 12345

I also encourage any Canadian Orgs trying to figure out e-receipts to check out this other forum - we've now set ours up with a word merge to pdf and it works great (there are limitations, but it will work until NXT is ready for Can orgs):

Sharon, based on the size of your donor base you might want to check out a simpler, more cost effective CRM like Little Green Light. It is so simple, easy to use, and has a great mail merge function (albeit without the conditional merges of RE7). I don't think it would work as well for larger organizations who are using their donor database as their organization-wide CRM, but it's amazing for development folks.

@Megan Thurman - If you haven't already I would recommend you check out the recent “What do we do now? Practical Advice for DBAs” webinar. And yes, you will still be able to export out of the system, but you will need to open that export within a desktop Microsoft application.

Be aware that after March 1 you will not be able to open ANY of your saved letters, labels, etc. in database view - None - zero. You will need to download these to your desktop or other file where you can open with the MS software. What a pain!!!

Pat Phillips:

RE: Losing Letters

Can we still export to Excel from RE?

Yes, you will still be able to export - we basically saved our tax receipt templates and acknowledgement letters to our local files and instead of hitting the merge button, we hit the export button and save the CSV for the merge - it will still prompt you to mark as receipted or acknowledged. A bit trickier with other letters, but we've figured out a new system with queries and exports and its working pretty good

Suzanne, you really had me going with this answer. I thought wow, they will help pay for the extra labor! Awesome! Yesterday, during the webinar, they kept asking how they can help, and I kept thinking, “send people”.

I totally agree with everything you said, thank you!

Beverly Porzelt:

Suzanne, you really had me going with this answer. I thought wow, they will help pay for the extra labor! Awesome! Yesterday, during the webinar, they kept asking how they can help, and I kept thinking, “send people”.

I totally agree with everything you said, thank you!

Send people, and send caffeine!

Beverly Porzelt:

I meant Sandra, not Suzanne

No worries - close to my middle name. ?

Hi,

There are a few partners including us, as you are already aware, that can help with Power Automate set-up. There is a bit of a charge initially to get it all configured as a one-off effort. This can involve your IT teams and some training. After that though it is fairly easy to add or edit new features which is something your teams could cope with from our experience or you can pay for hourly based support as needed.

Basically, I am trying to say it is a bit of initial investment but then very cost effective when you consider the staff time savings once things are in place.

There are still the other methods that have been outlined which are largely manual or involve your own local Office installs of course and these are easier short term to get over the initial issues.

Hope that helps, just giving some background from our experience to date.

Cheers

Warren @ SmartTHING

Warren Sherliker:

Hi,

There are a few partners including us, as you are already aware, that can help with Power Automate set-up. There is a bit of a charge initially to get it all configured as a one-off effort. This can involve your IT teams and some training. After that though it is fairly easy to add or edit new features which is something your teams could cope with from our experience or you can pay for hourly based support as needed.

Basically, I am trying to say it is a bit of initial investment but then very cost effective when you consider the staff time savings once things are in place.

Thanks Warren. Very valuable service. I feel badly right now for third party vendors as they are likely having to absorb much of the wrath of RE users being forced to use services they never budgeted for, and in reality, since budgets are often set in the autumn for calendar based fiscal years, many organizations may not be able to even consider a third party option until 2023. Another negative to BB doing this so unexpectedly at end of year.

I wish Blackbaud would consider cutting cost of RE a bit to allow folks room in their budget to buy these extra add-ons. Even Power BI and Automate require a license for best distribution methods, from what I understand. I have a feeling BB won't be doing that though. So again, I return to the thought that since Raiser's Edge is very expensive, and now custom reports and mail merges must be done outside the DB anyway, some may ending up switching to the less expensive options out there that export data.

Rachel Cavalier:

Suzie MacMillan:

Beverly Porzelt:

Does anyone know how to get around the address block issue? We use foreign addresses mixed with US. I cannot imagine formatting all the foreign addresses ourselves, especially in a merge document. Plus “fixing” every address. I hope I'm missing something!

Hi Beverly, while I haven't tried it yet to see if it works, my account manager just sent me this fix:

Our product team just posted this awesome solution (it will be added to the knowledgebase shortly)- can you please let me know if this works for you:

<instructions>

@Suzie MacMillan - I know it's only been 2 weeks but did you have any opportunity to try this fix on international addresses? I'm currently boggling about it myself.

It been a bit of testing and fixing and I've finally got it to work properly, the issue I was having was that word wasn't saving the set up for address block, but I've figured out a system now - if you save your letters and the CSV file for merging in the same local folder and they are always named the same, when you go to open the word merge, you say yes to linking it to the existing data (the previous merge CSV) but it will update to the newest one you just exported and keep your address block settings - and the word address block works just like the RE one did

If you want to send me a PM with your email I can send you the procedures I made for my team

If your organization has Office 365 and SharePoint, you should at least be able to save the letter templates in a shared space that everyone can access in real-time. Not much comfort in this situation, I know, but something!