Mail merges

Nancy Sherwood · October 2010

How do you format the downloadable export files to put certain columns ina certain order? In other words, I want First Name, Last Name, Address, City, State, Zip to appear in that column order in my export. Despite add those selected items in taht order in the mail merge setup, it still came out in the wrong order. The export file also has a lot of junk information at the top about the time and date of export. This export file is going to require a great deal of cleanup to be useable. How can I avoid such a time investment in the setup process?

Patrick Hansen · October 2010

Hi Nancy,

Unfortunately, you can't re-order the columns when you export data from Convio using the mail merge feature.

Is the data you're trying to pull available to you from Convio's Report Writer tool? If it is, that's probably your best bet. It looks like you haven't tried using the Report Writer tool yet in Convio. You can get started by watching the training tutorials:

http://customer.convio.com/site/PageServer?pagename=tutorial_reportwriter

Or, you can always just dive into Report Writer in the Convio Admin tools. Just go to Data Management > Reports, click on the middle tab called "Report Writer", then click on the "Create a New Report" button. That will take you step-by-step through the process.

-patrick

Nancy Sherwood · October 2010

Patrick Hansen:
Hi Nancy,

Unfortunately, you can't re-order the columns when you export data from Convio using the mail merge feature.

Is the data you're trying to pull available to you from Convio's Report Writer tool? If it is, that's probably your best bet. It looks like you haven't tried using the Report Writer tool yet in Convio. You can get started by watching the training tutorials:

http://customer.convio.com/site/PageServer?pagename=tutorial_reportwriter

Or, you can always just dive into Report Writer in the Convio Admin tools. Just go to Data Management > Reports, click on the middle tab called "Report Writer", then click on the "Create a New Report" button. That will take you step-by-step through the process.

-patrick

Report writer doesn't seem to allow you just to export your house file. That is what I want to do in order to import it into our donor database. It would be ideal to separate out the constituents based on existence of a mailing address. Does Convio allow exports in conjunction with queries? Or will I have to go through and sort through the exported files manually?

Patrick Hansen · October 2010

Nancy Sherwood:
Report writer doesn't seem to allow you just to export your house file. That is what I want to do in order to import it into our donor database. It would be ideal to separate out the constituents based on existence of a mailing address. Does Convio allow exports in conjunction with queries? Or will I have to go through and sort through the exported files manually?

Yes - you're right. Report Writer doesn't allow you to export just your constituent contact information.

Sounds like you're taking the right approach by running a query, then using the results of that query to generate a mail merge. That means you can select which fields/columns are included in the mail merge file, but can't control the order that the columns appear.

You shouldn't have to manually sift through the contact records that you export. Starting from a query should allow you to find just the specific constituents that you need.

-patrick

Mail merges

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