Letter and Mail

Yes, I will second Gina for her response. I went into the Config, and added Letter Descriptions for each of my desired letters (I have about 10-12, generally sorted by the funding area, and this way when I'm entering the batch, I ensure I can put the letter type in the batch.) Then, follow Gina's notes below using the Conditional Word Merge set up each letter. It takes a bit of time, but it is so worth it in the end! I spent a few hours getting each one just right, and now I can zip through them when I do the merge. 

Small world! We are having the same problem as we speak, and are stumped. We have a case open right now, and none of the usual suspects seem to be causing this. I'll let you know what it turns out to be for us, and maybe it will be something obscure nobody thinks to check.

We get "No records meet specified criteria" for conditional mail merges that we have marked "Acknowledged" in the mail merge process for gift acknowledgement letter. We have to go to the constituent's record and mark the gift "Not Acknowledged" to re-create the gift letter.  We can only access the conditions for the conditional mail merge when there is a gift batch that has been committed but not posted.



It is very cumbersome to have to create letters in configuration and in RE Mail; it was be much appreciated if Blackbaud can find a way to use the same letter for batches (in RE Mail) and for constituent records (in Configuration).

I agree with the call for BB to have ONE place to enter letters.  We never enter the whole letter in Config anymore because we don't run one-off letters from the gift - only with a batch in Mail.  We only create the name in Config (though I don't understand why that is necessary) and then do the Wizard and the conditional merge in Mail.Then we have a conditional mail-merge for our batches and have no problems with it once it's set up.  The "no records" thing is almost always because the gift is marked as acknowledged. We say "no" to the "Mark as Acknowleged?" screen the first time through - it's not unusual for us to have to redo the merge for some reason.  After merging the letters and printing them off, we "run" the merge again just to the point of the "Mark as Acknowleged?" screen and say "yes" when we're sure we're done with that batch. The occassional one-off letter can be changed/copied/created in the saved Word letter batch from our shared drive and noted or copied to Media or an Action in RE.



As to the problem of the changes not being saved, I had that over and over and it drove me nuts, but I know how to fix that.  After you've made a change to a conditional mail-merge letter, you MUST complete the merge all the way to the Word output, or the changes won't be saved.  Don't "cancel" and go back and save at the first screen - it won't work.  Name the merge something and send it somewhere you can find and delete it, THEN go back and save.  I can't tell you how many times I typed in an entire letter, forgot to merge it, and had to start over again.



Aldera's experience with the freezing of the merge has happened every time we upgraded or set up a new computer.  We refer to it as the "alt-ding" problem, becasue you have to use Alt-Tab to see the different open windows and find the error message that is buried somewhere (my computer said "ding" every time). For those experiencing this, it is a "Registry" problem and given the number of times it has come up, I think BB should finally train all its support folks on how to fix this.  It is, as Aldera said, a fairly easy fix, but don't ask me how IT did it!  

Just as a follow-up as I wasn't clear - I do run the conditional mail merge all the way through to final upload of the docs - multiple times all to the same effect - changes/updates not applied.

From what I've been able to tell from trial and error, all custom settings (margins, fonts, etc.) for a Word document are based on changes from the "Normal" template.  If the "Normal" template gets changed then it has a cascading effect on all the other customizations you've made.  When building documents for the Merge Wizard there is A LOT of potential for each of those conditional merge documents to have differing "Normal" styles and it results in chaos in the final merged document (that can even vary depending on which is the first "Normal" that gets pulled into the merged document).



Always start clean.  Type each letter from scratch using the EXACT setup that will be used for the final merge (don't copy and paste ANYTHING).  Learn how MERGEFORMAT and other field codes affect the merged document (https://support.office.com/en-in/article/Insert-and-format-field-codes-in-Word-2010-7e9ea3b4-83ec-4203-9e66-4efc027f2cf3)  Sometimes something as simple as changing which printer is chosen during document creation can change font spacing, margins, etc.  And remember, this isn't a typewriter. Use tabs and other formatting controls instead of multiple spaces (if you have to hit the space bar or Enter key more than twice in a row, you're probably doing it wrong!).