Address Finder Import

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Sandy Riutcel
Sandy Riutcel ✭
Ninth Anniversary
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussion
Greetings!



We have just completed the address finder for our entire database of 20,000+ constituents and are ready to pull the trigger on the import.  We plan to import all addresses to convert existing ones to the NCOA addresses.  The concern is that we have several thousand addresses with attributes for specific mailings and others that are marked to receive no mail.  Does anyone know of a way to have the attributes and receive no mail transfer from the current preferred address to the new one?  We have created a static query of the records with address attributes, just in case we need to add them manually.  Any thoughts?



Sandy
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Comments

  • Christine Robertson
    Christine Robertson ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Name Dropper Photogenic
    I don't think that you can move the attributes, but if you have someone who can do an import/export you can probably update all of these records in an hour or two (as long as all 20K don't have address attributes that you have to move).  



    Here's what you can do: Export the constituent ID, the Import ID for the NEW address and the Attribute information (Category, Decsription, Date and Comment) to a .csv file.  Open your .csv file and add an attribute import ID.  Import the attributes to the new addresses.



    A couple of things: make sure you only include the new address' import ID, make sure you have every attribute on a separate row (you may need to export out of query for this rather than Export) and keep in mind that you may end up having to map the import file together using VLOOKUP in Excel (this would be if you can't get the import file to only show the new address import ID).



    Finally, I would strongly encourage you to consider if any of your address attributes need to be solicit codes.  If someone has asked for no mail at all, it is my opinion that that information should live in a more prominent location than an address attribute.  It should be a solicit code or a costituent attribute (if your org uses those in place of solicit codes).



    If you need help with an export/import, that is definitely something that we could help you do.  Just send me a private message and we can talk through it there.
  • Nicole S
    Nicole S ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 3 Name Dropper Photogenic
    If you are using AddressFinder, I would do this through that interface and not an import.  If this is new to you, someone from support whold be able to walk you through it. 



    If I recall, you should be able to choose which settings (check boxes, date from) and attributes to carry over.  But again, I would check with support.
  • Christine Robertson
    Christine Robertson ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Name Dropper Photogenic
    If it can be done via Address Finder - I completely agree - I would do it that way.  I have never had a need to do it and I just don't remember if you can or not (since I haven't specifically looked for that functionality).

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