I am new to using RE. Although I received training a couple months ago our company has just recently converted over. So basically most of what I learned in the training is totally escaping me. I would like to know is there a way to do a mail merge using a specific gift batch or merge directly from a gift batch. In our old database we were able to merge directly from the gift batch. Any help on this would be appreciated.

Thanks.

If you committed the batch, you should have a query with the name "Gifts Posted as Batch..." The query will identify all of the gifts in the specific batch. In RE Mail you can just select that query and run your mail merge for those gifts.

Actually - depending on what you doing I think you do not need to do this this way at all.   I do not set up my batch committ process to create queries - it is a user preference that I do not do.  Others may do it but I do not - too many queries.

If you are trying to do a mail merge to acknowledge gifts you can go to Mail - Donor Acknowledgement Letters and set them up there.  It will pick up any gifts in the time frame you enter which are marked as Not Acknowledged.  You go to Mail Merge Wizard (button at the top once you open a new letter setup) to set them up. 

You can set up one letter to go to all people (simple merge) or have different letters depending on varying factors (letter code for example).  It will also during the process mark the gift as acknowledged and enter the date it was acknowledged (today's date).  There is more to it than that and can take some time to set up but it is not that hard to use once set up. 

Hint: when practicing the setup a) you have to have at least one gift in the system to be acknowledged and b) say no to the question do you want to acknowledge the gift when you are just testing and practicing otherwise you will have to keep going back to the gift and mark it not acknowledged again to do another test. Try reading in Knowledgebase or in User Guides about Donor Acknowledgement Letters or read previous posts here. 

On a daily basis, once set up, all you need to do is hit the "Merge" button at the bottom.  If you need to change them ever - use the wizard button again (you may want to use "save as" to practice with a new setup if making a lot of changes).

Melissa is right, once the Donor Acknowledgement letters are set up in Mail, they are really easy to run.  We have a couple different people who process the letters so I have a few acknowledgement groups set up, multiple letters per signer, and run them for each deposit.  Then I put them in a shared folder on the server and they each edit, print and mail thier own letters. Works like a charm.  

Thanks everyone for the information

I don't run acknowledgements for a specific batch either, but that was the question.