I want to import a lot of new constituents into Raisers Edge from an Excel spreadsheet but I am not sure how to import addresses with more than one line? In the Excel the addresses are broken up by columns, so Address Line 1, Address Line 2 etc are all in seperate fields but in Raisers Edge I can only select Address Lines. How do I make sure that all the address lines are added to the same address? Thanks, Cristabel

Hi Cristabel,

You neeed to use "/n" with no spaces in between words to seperate your address lines. So for example, if you had someone with an address of:

20 High Appartments
Rubbish Mews
Lovely Street

Then in the one cell you would need to have 20 High Appartments/nRubbish Mews/nLovely Street

NB if you have a /n at the end of the last address line then (I think) you will have a blank line between your last address line and the town when running labels/mail merges...etc

Lee

Hi Lee,
Thank you for replying, and that is really good to know!

The only problem is that there are about 2000 new people I need to add and the address lines are each in different cells. Is this the only way I can import them properly? As surely that means I will need to edit each address to be suitable for import which is very time consuming?

Thanks, Cristabel

Oh the joys of importing...

Unfortunately I don't think there is a way to import address line 1 address line 2...etc seperately. The way I do it is to sort the columns by address line 5, then address line 4...etc and then use the concatenate function in Excel to get them all into 1 cell.

Very simply, I would create a column at the end of the address lines and then in the first cell (assumption being that address Line 1 is in cell B5, Address line 2 in B6...etc) use the formula =(B5&"/n"&B6&"/n"&B7&"/n"B8) and drag down for all those with 4 address lines.

It sounds a pain, but it gets quite fast the more you do it...

 

 

Lee's answer is correct - the only way to import the different lines of the address (per BB Import training) is to use "/n".  Merging the cells in excel works very smoothly.  If you have not worked with it before, I'd suggest making a backup copy of your excel file just incase you ran into major problems.

Import-O-Matic, a plugin for the Raiser's Edge, will allow you to map multiple address line fields from the source data to the address block field in RE. Of course, it also translates input values, de-dupes constituents on the fly, imports constits and gifts simultaneously, cleans up addresses, imports to gift batch, matches on email address or spouse info, allows you to set default values, etc., but who needs any of that extra stuff? ;-) If you like, you can check out a video demonstration from it's home page here: http://www.omaticsoftware.com/Solutions/ImportOMaticAdvancedImporting.aspx Good luck! -Jeff