Spouse middle initial shows a period, when there is none

Chris Z

Has anyone else noticed that the spouse name showing on Bio1 shows with a period, even if there isn't one?


Is there a reason for this?


The only way to know for sure if the initial truly has a . after the initial is to open the spouse record.

JoAnn Strommen

I have notice some unintended use of "." also.  I believe it has to do with the formatting for the add/sal chosen. Don't know where that add/sal is chosen though. Possibly on spouse add/sal. ?  Don't see spouse under Tools > User Options > Records >

Maybe anyway....

Karen Stuhlfeier

 In the user options you choose what you want to view on the individual title bar. Tools-Options-Records-Individual title bar. You choose which type of addressee you want to view and you usually have the spouse included in some of your addressee lines. You wouldn't see spouse as an option because it is pulling a specific addressee.

Gina Gerhard

Chris - I think this is the same for a regular constituent as well.  If you enter a middle initial without a period, it shows in the system name with a period.

To catch these, I actually audit for 'Middle Name one of A, B, C, etc. (without the periods) to find where the periods have actually not been entered.


I'm assuming you could do the same query for spouses as well.

 

Chris Z

Karen Stuhlfeier:

 In the user options you choose what you want to view on the individual title bar. Tools-Options-Records-Individual title bar. You choose which type of addressee you want to view and you usually have the spouse included in some of your addressee lines. You wouldn't see spouse as an option because it is pulling a specific addressee.

 

I'm not referring to the individual title bar, atop the record.  This is down at the bottom of Bio1, next to the button named Spouse.  I'm not aware of any way to control what is displaying there.

Chris Z

Gina Gerhard:

Chris - I think this is the same for a regular constituent as well.  If you enter a middle initial without a period, it shows in the system name with a period.

To catch these, I actually audit for 'Middle Name one of A, B, C, etc. (without the periods) to find where the periods have actually not been entered.


I'm assuming you could do the same query for spouses as well.


 

Thanks.  This sounds really time-consuming, so I'd have to build my query just to focus on current donors or members, and clean up accordingly.

Gina Gerhard

You could just export the middle name out, fix by adding the period, and reimport them back in?

That would fix all of them initially, and then you can just run the query to keep them updated periodically.


 

Peter Gulka 3

This is a feature of RE. By default it always auto-shortens the middle name field to an initial with a period. In cases where the middle name field only contains one letter, it is still performing the same function. The period isn't stored in a record anywhere, the system is adding it on the fly as it displays the name. 

Gina Gerhard

But that feature is somewhat problematic -- if you actually need your middle initial with a period in the field -- so you can use elsewhere and in other ways.  So it looks like nothing's missing until you go to use the middle name/initial in a merge of some sort, and then you have to fix them!

Peter Gulka 3

That's where you would use Addresee/Salutation formulas to enforce that rule. Then make sure that in any content you generate you are using the Addressee and/or Salutation merge field. 

Elizabeth Johnson

Hi Gina and Chris,


Since you want to have the middle initial with a period after it in your database and others also do, an easier way to query on it would be to use a wild card instead of the "one of" operator.


Middle initial = ? will identify all the middle initial fields with only one character. 


Chris, you could then use the export that Gina mentioned now that you can easily identify all the constituents (and then their spouses) once it is in Excel you could use the concatenate function to add a period, copy, and paste the content back over itself as values only and reimport. That shouldn't even take a half an hour depending on the size of your database.


Personally, I've  been wanting to remove the periods and only use the addressee/salutation configurations and my hands were tied as I was integrated with The Education Edge. That is no longer true, although I doubt I'll get to this anytime soon. In the meantime, I'll keep using my audit query.


I hope this is helpful.