Help! creating a list...

Claudia Sauers · February 2018

Help!

I was given a list of constituent ID's and asked to create a mailing list, the consitutent id's are listed in an excel spreadsheet with no other information. They were not exported out of the database but rather compiled one by one by a gift officer. Short of looking all of these people up individually, is there a way to create a mailing list with this excel sheet?

Karen Stuhlfeier · February 2018

Here's the Knowledgebase article that tells you how to cut and paste ID's into a query:

https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/41666

Claudia Sauers · February 2018

Externally grateful doesn't even cover it, thank you so much for salvaging my day tomorrow!

Karen Stuhlfeier · February 2018

No problem - I remember feeling the same way when I learned how to do this.

Alan French · February 2018

I'm going to offer a word of caution based on my own experience. There are several occasions when I've been given a similar list of IDs, and after creating the query and exporting the additional data, performing a global add or whatever other task was required, it became apparent (though sometimes not for several weeks) that there had been typos in the list; impossible for me to spot, as I didn't have any other information such as name to cross-reference against. In one case, it was a couple of months before someone came to me and said "I don't think I should be the canvasser on Mrs So-and-so's record"...

Claudia Sauers · February 2018

Alan,

Thank you for your advice! I did share with my team that this is by no means an ideal way to keep a list and at the very least I need an ID and a name so that we have multiple markers to confirm. Have a great day, happy friday!

Joanne Felci 2 · February 2018

Karen Stuhlfeier:

No problem - I remember feeling the same way when I learned how to do this.

Me too! I wish someone had told me years and years ago...one of my favorite short cut things

Karen Stuhlfeier · February 2018

Whenever I export a list for someone on our staff I warn them to keep the constituent ID column in the list. Then the ID's came from RE and they can remove as many people as they want and then I can make a clean list cutting and pasting the ID's into a query. I tell them that if they remove the ID's it will be on them to do any data entry that might result from that

Phillip Bicknell · February 2018

Claudia Sauers:

Help!

I was given a list of constituent ID's and asked to create a mailing list, the consitutent id's are listed in an excel spreadsheet with no other information. They were not exported out of the database but rather compiled one by one by a gift officer. Short of looking all of these people up individually, is there a way to create a mailing list with this excel sheet?

In my office, when we want to point colleagues at a specific constituent, it's normal for us to add two or three other bio items, eg, First Name, Surname, Postcode/Zip-code. Then one has cross-checking fields.

Roseann Guinan · February 2018

Open a Constituent Query; in Criteria Field, pull over Constituent Information/Constituent ID; for Operator use "one of".

Go to your spreadsheet and copy all of the IDs;

go back to your Query and pull the side sliding bar all the way to the bottom;

in the last cell, use Ctrl V to paste the ID's into the "one of" list.

When you close it, you should see a list of all the ID's pasted in.

Assuming they were correctly entered (?!?) you will then be able to pull the Constituents you want to see. From there, you can either pull over the other fields you need or you can use this Query to Export what you want to see.

Hope this helps!

Claudia Sauers · February 2018

This is such a neat trick! Thanks for sharing!

Jen Mackinder · March 2018

Claudia Sauers:

Help!

I was given a list of constituent ID's and asked to create a mailing list, the consitutent id's are listed in an excel spreadsheet with no other information. They were not exported out of the database but rather compiled one by one by a gift officer. Short of looking all of these people up individually, is there a way to create a mailing list with this excel sheet?

Another option (if you have a huge list the previous method is good for up to 500 records at a time) is to save the file as a csv then run an update import on the constituents - make sure the "How do you want the system to identify existing constituents?" is set to "Use the Constituent ID." On the summary tab, make sure you check the "Create an output query of the records updated." Then run the import - it basically runs through the list of constituents and pulls them into a query for you. Has helped me many times!

Barbara Schlichter · March 2018

Claudia Sauers:

Help!

I was given a list of constituent ID's and asked to create a mailing list, the consitutent id's are listed in an excel spreadsheet with no other information. They were not exported out of the database but rather compiled one by one by a gift officer. Short of looking all of these people up individually, is there a way to create a mailing list with this excel sheet?

There is a fantastic free product I use all the time: https://www.smartthing.org/smartpaste/ It will take an unlimited number of "one ofs", ids, import ids, names, etc. You just have to register, also free. I've used their customer support in the past when my smartpaste broke - they are terrific. Just another option.

Barbara

Help! creating a list...

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