Conditional Mail Merge Issue

Tara Simms

Hi Everyone,


I'm running into an issue when trying to run a conditional mail merge. I'm trying to create one coditional mail merge for four seperate mailings for 20 or so gifts. When I run the query for the individual merges, it seems to generate all of my letters, but when I run it under a conditional merge, only one letter is being generated. I'm also having less urgent formatting issues. 


Any help is appreciated!


Thanks,

Tara

JoAnn Strommen

By any chance are records marked for consolidated receipts?  Had similar experience with using condition merge in Mail>Receipts.  No letter doc generated when using conditional though gifts would get marked as receipted.


Just one possibility... per BB can't run conditional merge receipts using consolidated receipt even if all gifts for one fund.

Tara Simms

JoAnn Strommen:

By any chance are records marked for consolidated receipts?  Had similar experience with using condition merge in Mail>Receipts.  No letter doc generated when using conditional though gifts would get marked as receipted.


Just one possibility... per BB can't run conditional merge receipts using consolidated receipt even if all gifts for one fund.

Thanks for responding! I'm not sure. How can I check that?

Rob Crenshaw

I've found from personal experience (in other words, I haven't verified this with BB) that RE doesn't really allow for conditional merges from within the Mail function. Nor does it like text boxes and other special formatting. We tend to export the data file for the letters we use conditional merges in instead of using the Mail function. 

Karen Stuhlfeier

Conditional mail merges work great in Raiser's Edge. Sometimes it really helps to get some training in order to have a better understanding of how this works. Blackbaud support is there to help you too.

Michael Sherman 2

Tara Simms:

JoAnn Strommen:

By any chance are records marked for consolidated receipts?  Had similar experience with using condition merge in Mail>Receipts.  No letter doc generated when using conditional though gifts would get marked as receipted.


Just one possibility... per BB can't run conditional merge receipts using consolidated receipt even if all gifts for one fund.

Thanks for responding! I'm not sure. How can I check that?

 

Bio2 tab, Receipt type. (Upper left, third field down)

Gracie Schild

I have to disagree with Rob. Setting up the conditional merge file is a royal pain in the patoot (sp?) but once it's there, it works seamlessly.  I would suggest that either your letter is inactive or you choose the wrong letter name or something similar.  Perhaps on the "condition to merge on" tab (I forget what the real name is) you've chosen something other than Letter as the condition. Sometimes the conditional merge does "break down" and I think the only thing you can do is start over from scratch.  I'm sure the online manual can give you a good step by step procedure - personally, I learned from our amazing consultant/trainer.  Also, starting fresh (see other threads on the topic) will usually fix formatting problems.  I did have issues with margins and fonts, but when I started with a completey new letter, I just fixed all formatting FIRST before typing (not copying and pasting) any text.

erin russell

I've been attemting this myself, but with an acknowledgment letter that comes out of export and having all kinds of problems. The main one being - when the merge is completed most of the letter is blank. There are a few straggling characters, but by no means what i've put into the documents. Frustrating!