Mail-Merge provides a way for you to export data to your computer for mail-merge and other uses.  Access the Mail-Merge page from the Congregation menu. There are three options on the Mail-Merge page, one for Yahrzeit reminders, one for Birthdays and one for Anniversaries to export the respective data.  More data export options will be coming in the future - tell us what you'd like and we'll consider it for a future version!

Executing Data Export

To execute a data export, select your data option (yahrzeits, birthdays or anniversaries), enter a date range for the records you want, then click the Export button.  You will be asked whether to Open or Save the file.  For most mail-merge operations, you'll want to save the file.  The file name will be a combination of the data option you selected plus the date range (e.g. Yahrzeits_Tuesday,_January_01,_2008_to_Friday,_January_01,_2010.csv).

What is the file format for the exported data?

The data is exported to a tab-delimited file that includes data headers in the first line.  This is the optimal format for mail-merge using the most popular word processing programs.  However, if you try to open the file in a spreadsheet such as Microsoft Excel, you will need to change the file extension from .csv to .xls. You might wonder why the file uses tabs and not comma-separated values, as implied by the file extension.  The simple reason is that tabs avoid confusion when a comma is present in the data, such as in a date, which would throw off the columns for those lines.

Creating Your Mail-Merge Document

Due to the wide range of versions and brands of software, please refer to the documentation for your software.