Simple Word Merge Export with Conditional Formatting

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Aaron Rothberg
Aaron Rothberg ✭
Eighth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Name Dropper Photogenic
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussion
I've just finished building our 2019 Year End tax receipt exports and I have a question about conditional formatting.

I've grouped gifts together by appeal code so that if someone gave $15 to our 5K road race and another $100 to the same 5K, our receipt will read $115 to the 5K. Additionally, I've conditionally formatted the appeal id and the dollar amount so that if the gift amount to an appeal is $0, neither the appeal id nor the gift amount will display on the letter.

Here's the problem I'm trying to overcome. I have 20 different appeal groups in the letter which means if someone only gave to 2 appeals, I have 18 blank lines that need to be deleted from the letter before it can be printed. Does anyone know of a way to format the letter as I've described above, yet not reserve a blank line for any of the appeal ids which do not have donations associated with them for any given letter?

Below are two screenshots highlighting the export setup and the resultant receipt.

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40e72f5e169a48387f53735a2c5f8a8c-huge-ex


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Comments

  • Alan French
    Alan French ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 3 Name Dropper Photogenic
    I've done something similar with a few of our letters - there's some advice here on how to suppress blank lines in a mail merge. Basically you create a formula that only inserts a line break if the merge field is not empty.
  • Aaron Rothberg
    Aaron Rothberg ✭
    Eighth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Name Dropper Photogenic
    Thanks Alan. I'll give that a shot.
  • Dariel Dixon 2
    Dariel Dixon 2 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Seventh Anniversary Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic
    To add to Alan French‍'s point, mergefields in word can be tricky.  But they can do wonders when done correctly.  I have a letter that uses an If statement based on mergefield conditions.  I'd think I would look into that, however your letter would need an IF statement for all 20 appeal codes.  Which wouldn't be a problem once you get the first one working.  Also, I don't believe you can copy & paste mergefield comparison statements, each of them have to be written with the code fields braces by Shift-F7 (I think that's it, I can't remember for sure).

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