Post-Acceptance - Photos for merging

Michelle Reinhardt
Michelle Reinhardt
Sixth Anniversary
in Blackbaud Award Management™ & Blackbaud Stewardship Management™ Discussions
Hello, we are going to use the post-acceptance process this year to collect information and a photo from all scholarship recipients. We want to create a designed printed piece and merge in all the information about recipients and their photos – name, major, program name, etc. However, when we export we get an excel file with individual photos named a unique identifier that is in the excel file and each photo is in the individual folder named whatever the student named the file. Using InDesign we are not able to figure out how we can merge in the photos because they are all in individual file folders. How have others done this?



 
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  • Andrea Nelson
    Andrea Nelson
    Fifth Anniversary Facilitator 1
    Hi Michelle,

    We had this exact same issue. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to figure out a solution before we went to print, so we ended up having to work with our IT department to use the recipients' student ID photos. It worked, but it definitely wasn't ideal. Have you been able to find a way to make it work? At the time, my only thought was to rename the files manually and save them in one place, which I hope it doesn't come to that. I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who experienced this though. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it too.

    Thanks,

    Annie Nelson

    University of Dayton
  • Elaine Innis
    Elaine Innis
    Sixth Anniversary Facilitator 1
    Photos are part of our post-acceptance process as well. It's a manual solution, but here it is:  I go into each PA application, pull up the photo. right-click "Save As" and rename it to the student's name, and then save the file in a folder called "Student Photos" on our department drive. It would be fabulous if the photos could download automatically, but I guess they haven't figured that one out yet. 
  • Kim Simpkins
    Kim Simpkins
    Fifth Anniversary Name Dropper Participant Facilitator 1
    We do exactly as Elaine Innis mentioned - right click on the photo, save it as the student's name, and collect them in a folder called "Student Photos."
  • Penny Manners
    Penny Manners
    Fifth Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1

    @Elaine Innis Hello! I am working in this project right now, and I am wondering how you merge the photos to a Word document after they have been named? Thank you in advance.

  • Heather Johnson
    Heather Johnson
    Fifth Anniversary Name Dropper Participant Facilitator 1

    @Michelle Reinhardt I haven't worked directly in Blackbaud Awards Management yet with the reports they produce. However, it's just been a manual process. Having to save each photo individually and then individually add them to each recipient page.

  • Russel Heskin
    Russel Heskin
    Sixth Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant

    @Michelle Reinhardt It's a manual process for me at WesternU, too; but I don't even bother saving the photos. I complete the merge with everything but the photo, and then I open the photo in BAM on my browser, right-click to copy it, and paste it into the Word doc. Then I crop and resize it as needed. It takes me 30-60 seconds per photo.

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