If, then statements in Quick Letters

Amanda Downes

I have read other posts about using the If, then functionality but am running into some obstacles when trying to use this with Mail/Quick Letters. It seems my options for the field names to use are very limited and it is not allowing me to pull in other fields that appear on my spreadsheet. I am guessing the RE mail merge functionality does not work the same way as in Word. Is there a way to add new field names? I must be doing something wrong, or perhaps I am not fully understanding how it is supposed to operate and if there are limitations. I would like to use an attribute to identify letters that should have specific language inserted in. For example, when someone makes a gift that qualifies them for our society, we could add an attribute for this and then I can generate thank you letters from our president through Quick Letters in Mail (they already received their acknowledgement/tax letter) that would pull in this attribute to add personalized language about them being new members. Can anyone please advise if there is another way I should be approaching this?

Thanks!

 

Amanda Downes

Director of Advancement Services, Wesley College

James Andrews

Amanda Downes:

I have read other posts about using the If, then functionality but am running into some obstacles when trying to use this with Mail/Quick Letters. It seems my options for the field names to use are very limited and it is not allowing me to pull in other fields that appear on my spreadsheet. I am guessing the RE mail merge functionality does not work the same way as in Word. Is there a way to add new field names? I must be doing something wrong, or perhaps I am not fully understanding how it is supposed to operate and if there are limitations. I would like to use an attribute to identify letters that should have specific language inserted in. For example, when someone makes a gift that qualifies them for our society, we could add an attribute for this and then I can generate thank you letters from our president through Quick Letters in Mail (they already received their acknowledgement/tax letter) that would pull in this attribute to add personalized language about them being new members. Can anyone please advise if there is another way I should be approaching this?

Thanks!

 

Amanda Downes

Director of Advancement Services, Wesley College

It sounds like you're trying to add things to quick letters that aren't available. Quick letters is mainly just to get names and addresses.

It's long been a suggestion to make many more fields available in Mail than are currently available, but until Blackbaud implements some of those changes you might be stuck using Export to get what you want. Luckily a lot of Mail's functionality is available in Export via address processing -- it'll be more complicated but you can probably get what you need that way.

Sara Johansen

Amanda Downes:

I have read other posts about using the If, then functionality but am running into some obstacles when trying to use this with Mail/Quick Letters. It seems my options for the field names to use are very limited and it is not allowing me to pull in other fields that appear on my spreadsheet. I am guessing the RE mail merge functionality does not work the same way as in Word. Is there a way to add new field names? I must be doing something wrong, or perhaps I am not fully understanding how it is supposed to operate and if there are limitations. I would like to use an attribute to identify letters that should have specific language inserted in. For example, when someone makes a gift that qualifies them for our society, we could add an attribute for this and then I can generate thank you letters from our president through Quick Letters in Mail (they already received their acknowledgement/tax letter) that would pull in this attribute to add personalized language about them being new members. Can anyone please advise if there is another way I should be approaching this?

Thanks!

 

Amanda Downes

Director of Advancement Services, Wesley College

Amanda,

I use Export to produce most of our letters for that reason. I use a lot of if/then statements and want the option to use more fields than are available in the Mail function. I use the Blackbaud Conditional Word Merge and Blackbaud Simple Word Merge formats to generate the letters from the Export function.

Sara Johansen

Database Manager, Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New Orleans

JoAnn Strommen

Sara Johansen:

Amanda,

I use Export to produce most of our letters for that reason. I use a lot of if/then statements and want the option to use more fields than are available in the Mail function. I use the Blackbaud Conditional Word Merge and Blackbaud Simple Word Merge formats to generate the letters from the Export function.

Sara Johansen

Database Manager, Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New Orleans

Using Export is also what I'd suggest.  The Word  merge function there should work quite well.  The good news is that once you have the Export set up it's really not much more work than using Mail.