Update constituent mailing addresses

Samantha Picazo · September 2016

So our organization has a list move records that just has a name (Mr. John Doe or Mr. and Mrs. John Doe), old address, new address, and move effective date. I want to know what's the best way to mark the old addresses and add the new one.

Daniel Noga 2 · September 2016

Samantha Picazo:

So our organization has a list move records that just has a name (Mr. John Doe or Mr. and Mrs. John Doe), old address, new address, and move effective date. I want to know what's the best way to mark the old addresses and add the new one.

This is what we typically do:

Open the Constituent record of the person whose address you'd like to update and from the menu up top, go to Constituent > Copy Preferred Address to Alternate. This will automatically create a new address record with the current Preferred Address, but the type will be set to "Previous Address" and the "Send Mail" box will be unchecked. The "Date To:" field will automatically be populated with the current date at the time you do this; since your spreadsheet has the Effective Date, you might want to change this field accordingly. Essentially, this is a one-step process for creating a backup address record for future reference so that you'll always know the person used to live there.
Now you can just edit the current Preferred Address in-place by updating it with the new info. If you wanted to add the corresponding info to the Date To: field or change the Address Type, you'd have to open the actual address record on the Addresses tab to do that.

Jen Claudy · September 2016

See Daniel's response for how to do this individually. If, however, you are talking about a long list of updates, you might want to use either MS Access or MS Excel and match up those records with a Constituent ID, then Import your changes. You would want to Import the Previous Address as well as the new address, because you really do want to keep that old address information in your database.

Samantha Picazo · September 2016

Jen Claudy:

See Daniel's response for how to do this individually. If, however, you are talking about a long list of updates, you might want to use either MS Access or MS Excel and match up those records with a Constituent ID, then Import your changes. You would want to Import the Previous Address as well as the new address, because you really do want to keep that old address information in your database.

Thank you both for your responses, but yes, I have at least 1,000 records to update. I figured it wasn't going to be easy since spreadsheet given to use with the new address isn't the best (names and addresses aren't separated by column). Looks like I'll be matching up quite a few constituent IDs to names! Thanks again!

Daniel Noga 2 · September 2016

Thank you both for your responses, but yes, I have at least 1,000 records to update. I figured it wasn't going to be easy since spreadsheet given to use with the new address isn't the best (names and addresses aren't separated by column). Looks like I'll be matching up quite a few constituent IDs to names! Thanks again!

See, I thought about suggesting an import, but you didn't say anything about having Constituent IDs--so if you wanted to import, yes, you'd have to go look up Constituent IDs. If that's the case, I'm not so sure you're saving that much effort by going the import route. If I were forced to pull up a thousand records manually, I'd just change them while I was in there already--editing addresses vs. copying and pasting Constituent IDs from RE: into a spreadsheet doesn't seem like that big a difference. If you could be 100% sure that your Name / Addressee column in your sheet matched what you have in RE:, you could potentially get Constituent IDs using Query, but it seems like a longshot and could be foiled if you have any names at all that occur more than once (that can be an issue in our database).

Samantha Picazo · September 2016

Daniel Noga:

Thank you both for your responses, but yes, I have at least 1,000 records to update. I figured it wasn't going to be easy since spreadsheet given to use with the new address isn't the best (names and addresses aren't separated by column). Looks like I'll be matching up quite a few constituent IDs to names! Thanks again!

See, I thought about suggesting an import, but you didn't say anything about having Constituent IDs--so if you wanted to import, yes, you'd have to go look up Constituent IDs. If that's the case, I'm not so sure you're saving that much effort by going the import route. If I were forced to pull up a thousand records manually, I'd just change them while I was in there already.

Hmm I see... Attached is how we recieved the data

JoAnn Strommen · September 2016

Haven't been following this thread that close but just FYI, Samantha, if you need to separate name from addresses you may be able to do it. If you haven't played with that function in Excel, it's on data tab > text to columns. To combine parts of address back together, you'd use concatenate function. Sort of cool function. If you have ID's in your info, even with the work of separating/re-joining columns it mght be easier than opening 1000 records.

Jen Claudy · September 2016

Another option, which would save you tons of time and probably only cost a little bit, is to have your database screened against the NCOA. I'm thinking maybe the data you received is from a mailhouse? You could ask if they would re-run your list, and then you can resubmit it with ConstIDs and Address ImportIDs. Or, assuming you don't have Blackbaud's AddressFinder, you can have your entire database screened (this is what I do, and I have a process that works well...and gives me the ultimate control over what is happening with my data). A mailhouse we work with will screen any number of records for $25, whether or not we're doing a mailing.

Jennifer Lange · September 2016

Samantha Picazo:

So our organization has a list move records that just has a name (Mr. John Doe or Mr. and Mrs. John Doe), old address, new address, and move effective date. I want to know what's the best way to mark the old addresses and add the new one.

Every list that goes to the Mail House has a CID included. When they return the processed list, we run it thru Import (we use Import O Matic) and update the addresses. I've gone from 100 pieces of retunred mail/mailing to 2 because of this. * * NOTE: We did say "from now going forward...." I did NOT attempt to go back and clean the bucketful of undeliverable mail I inherited!)

Update constituent mailing addresses

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