Information stored on Hosted Site

Cindy Avery

Does anyone who works as a Hosted Site know how to quickly/easily delete letter batches that are stored there? After I retrieve my letters from a mail merge, our policy is to save them in our "common folder" on our local server so I don't need them on the hosted site anymore. While I usually keep the current month and the most recent past month on the hosted site, I'd like to delete the older ones. So far, I haven't found a way to do this aside from ticking each box individually. I can Select All but then I have to untick the batch of letters I want to keep. There seems to be no way to sort/filter. In any given month, I could produce an average of 75-100 batches of letters and I don't want to waste my time ticking boxes in order to tidy up the list. Any suggestions would be appreciated!!

Jen Claudy

If I'm misunderstanding the question, my apologies (it seems that's the kind of day I'm having...).



I think what might be happening is that when you generate a letter batch, you are saving it to the Files folder on the BB Citrix portal (Hosting Services File Transfer Utility).  We don't really use this piece...I save files to my Desktop and then move them where they need to go on our network.  That's what I would recommend...when you generate the file from RE and save it, find your local (C:) Desktop and save there.  Then, go to your Desktop and move the file to where you actually want it to be.



I created a folder on my Desktop named Blackbaud where I save Exports and anything else from RE, including Import files to go back into RE.  This keeps my Desktop from becoming too cluttered.

Emmet O'Conlon 2

Two things come to mind:



1. As long as your policy permits it, you can have BB make your mapped network drives available as a location to save within RE. We did this, and it repeatedly saves a lot of time vs. having to click-click-click through to the desktop or somewhere else.



2. You can access your shared files on the BB website by using Windows Explorer, but the way to get there is indirect. After you've opened BB's hosted Word/Excel/Acrobat Reader, go to File > Open, browse to your directory, then right click over one of your folders, and select Open in new window. This will open Windows Explorer for you, but connected to the BB website and your hosted files. From there you can filter, sort, etc., as you normally would using Windows. 

 



Good luck!

Cindy Avery

Thank you Jennifer and Emmett. I have tried both of these solutions but I am willing to try again. One of the issues I have with saving the letter batches on my local computer (as opposed to the hosted site) is that the formatting gets all screwed up. I'm told it has something to do with compatibility between RE and Word (I am using Word 2010). If I open the batch from the hosted site, it asks Enable Editing? and once I click Yes a copy opens on my desktop. Once I am done with all the tweaking, I save it locally but the original one (the one on the hosted site) is still there. Since I typically do an average of 4 batches a day, by the end of a month, there are a lot of batches to delete from the server. This volume of things to delete was the crux of the question. :-)

Emmet O'Conlon 2

The formatting issues are likely related to Word styles; we have had the same issue. I would suggest editing all your templates (sorry!) to remove any formatting that uses a pre-defined Word style (like Body, Heading, etc.). Anywhere you see words like that the formatting will change depending on the set up of Word (and BB's setup of Word could easily be different from your own). For example, in Word, a font of Calibri is not equal to Calibri (Body), and a font with (Body) in its description is likely the source of formatting issues.





 

Cindy Avery

Again, another GREAT suggestion. We do, however, use Times New Roman (12). Maybe I will experiment with other font types and styles and see what happens. Thanks again!

Jessica Smith 4

Emmet O'Conlon:

Two things come to mind:


1. As long as your policy permits it, you can have BB make your mapped network drives available as a location to save within RE. We did this, and it repeatedly saves a lot of time vs. having to click-click-click through to the desktop or somewhere else.


2. You can access your shared files on the BB website by using Windows Explorer, but the way to get there is indirect. After you've opened BB's hosted Word/Excel/Acrobat Reader, go to File > Open, browse to your directory, then right click over one of your folders, and select Open in new window. This will open Windows Explorer for you, but connected to the BB website and your hosted files. From there you can filter, sort, etc., as you normally would using Windows. 

 


Good luck!

I am having a similar issue. To do a tax letter for our donors, I am having to export to a Simple Word Merge document to get the fields I need for the letter. However, the merge only lets me save to BB's hosted files and I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get back there if I need to tweak a letter.

 

Cindy Avery

This is where I am trying to delete the letters. My choices seem to be delete them all by clicking the box next to Name or delete them one by one. I'm looking for a way to filter (a la Excel) so I can tailor the deleting to my needs. OR learn from this esteemed community about a better option. Many thanks!

Cindy Avery

Cindy Avery:

This is where I am trying to delete the letters. My choices seem to be delete them all by clicking the box next to Name or delete them one by one. I'm looking for a way to filter (a la Excel) so I can tailor the deleting to my needs. OR learn from this esteemed community about a better option. Many thanks!

I can't get my screenshot to show up. I give up!! This is too complicated for my Friday morning brain.