Date Options for Letters

Wendy Hesketh

Our database is hosted.  I have two gift date options for my mail merge short = 3/14/18 or long = Wednesday, March 14, 2018. In my experience all business letters have the format of March 14, 2018.  Apparently this is not an option because we are hosted.  The solution was to manually change letters.  I have 350 letters to send out and I don't want to go into each one and change the date.

Ryan Hyde

Unfortunately, there's no real solution to this. When we were first faced with this, we decided to start using the short date format. We have never received any complaint about it from donors, for what it's worth.

John Heizer

Wendy Hesketh:

Our database is hosted.  I have two gift date options for my mail merge short = 3/14/18 or long = Wednesday, March 14, 2018. In my experience all business letters have the format of March 14, 2018.  Apparently this is not an option because we are hosted.  The solution was to manually change letters.  I have 350 letters to send out and I don't want to go into each one and change the date.

Do merge commands like {MERGEFIELD DATE\\@ "MMMM d, yyy"} not work in the hosted environment?

Ryan Hyde

I honestly don't know - I know nothing about Merge commands. In RE hosted, all of this is facilitated by a simple mail merge process using a hosted version of Microsoft Office. Is that merge command something that's usually available in a office merge, or is that something else entirely? 


I'd be happy to test this out if you tell me how I'd utilize this. I understand the syntax of it, but I just don't know how to use it in the word merge process.

John Heizer

Ryan Hyde:

I honestly don't know - I know nothing about Merge commands. In RE hosted, all of this is facilitated by a simple mail merge process using a hosted version of Microsoft Office. Is that merge command something that's usually available in a office merge, or is that something else entirely? 


I'd be happy to test this out if you tell me how I'd utilize this. I understand the syntax of it, but I just don't know how to use it in the word merge process.

Any time you insert a merge field into any Word merge template there is "behind the scenes" code going on.


Here's some information on how to reveal and customize those codes in your master document:  https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_word-mso_other-mso_2010/date-format-problem-in-mail-merge-word-2010/91e86ec7-1176-e011-8dfc-68b599b31bf5


 

Melissa S Graves

Would't a simple find and replace of "Wednesday, " remove it on all letters?

Ryan Hyde

Jon! This is great! This works exactly as expected in the hosted environment.


Wendy, follow the link that Jon posted and use "MMMM d, yyyy" as your argument (I tried it with 'yyy' as Jon had initially wrote, but I got an error). However, if that seems daunting to you, Melissa's suggestion is a no-brainer solution that I'm upset I didn't think of earlier. Sometimes the simple method is the best one.


That said, I'm going to spend some time updating the merge commands in all of my letters because I like this solution a lot.

Diane Marks

This why I love the Daily Digest Forums.  Always great tips. What an aha moment.  Thank you John for the wonderful tip. I am updating my letters today.




John Heizer:

Wendy Hesketh:

Our database is hosted.  I have two gift date options for my mail merge short = 3/14/18 or long = Wednesday, March 14, 2018. In my experience all business letters have the format of March 14, 2018.  Apparently this is not an option because we are hosted.  The solution was to manually change letters.  I have 350 letters to send out and I don't want to go into each one and change the date.

Do merge commands like {MERGEFIELD DATE\\@ "MMMM d, yyy"} not work in the hosted environment?

 

 

Wendy Hesketh

I just tried the fix that Jon suggested (Shift-F9 on the merge field and change the format) and it worked perfectly!!!!  Thank you all for trouble shooting my problem!!! Find and replace would have worked but would have had to be preformed on all letters.  This is a more permanent fix!


Wendy

Gracie Schild

At my last organization, we also had the "Wednesday, March xx, 2018" problem, but we solved it through our settings in Word when setting up the letters in Mail - each workstation's Word settings, that is (big deal - only three people needed it!). I'm very interested to see a way to fix it within RE, and will definitely use that if called upon to do so!


I'm sure someone will say "duh, it's right there", but is there one handy place with all the Function Key uses printed out together? I no longer have access to RE on a daily basis, but I'm guessing it's in the User's Guide somewhere. Any suggestions on where I should look?


Thanks!

Gracie Schild

gracie@bluebird.business

505.428.9551

www,bluebird.business

John Heizer

Gracie Schild:

At my last organization, we also had the "Wednesday, March xx, 2018" problem, but we solved it through our settings in Word when setting up the letters in Mail - each workstation's Word settings, that is (big deal - only three people needed it!). I'm very interested to see a way to fix it within RE, and will definitely use that if called upon to do so!


I'm sure someone will say "duh, it's right there", but is there one handy place with all the Function Key uses printed out together? I no longer have access to RE on a daily basis, but I'm guessing it's in the User's Guide somewhere. Any suggestions on where I should look?


Thanks!

Gracie Schild

gracie@bluebird.business

505.428.9551

www,bluebird.business

 

This solution for formatting dates is a Word issue/fix.  It all happens within Word, not RE.  The list of Word keyboard shortcuts is extremely long, varies from version to version, and can be found here: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/keyboard-shortcuts-for-microsoft-word-on-windows-95ef89dd-7142-4b50-afb2-f762f663ceb2


If you're looking for a list of RE keyboard shorcuts they're listed here:  https://www.blackbaud.com/files/support/guides/re7ent/re7shortcuts.pdf