Partner moved and now I have two. How do I make them one

[Gerry Gardner]

I recently installed the app and began adding from Jan. 2004. between that time one partner moved and now I have the same person entered twice. how can I merge the two into one, as they should be, with the current address?

Thanks.

Gerry.

[jmuehleisen]

Hi Gerry,

Thanks for your good question. If I understand your question, you have 2 records for the same donor and want to delete one of them.

Now, if you don't have any giving history / special days, etc., then you can just delete the one that you don't want.

But, if you do have some giving history (or special days, etc.), at the present, you'll have to re-enter it to transfer it to the new record.

Bummer.

That sounds like something I ought to add to the program... some way to combine 2 records into one. I'll put that on my list of things to do.

Or, did I misunderstand your question?

[jmuehleisen]

Gerry,

I had a chance this evening to put in a simple routine to combine two partner records.

Here's how it works: you select whatever you consider to be the most "correct" record in the partner details screen.

Then, using the pull down "Tools" menu, look for the item titled "Merge Partner Records."

This will bring up a form where you can select the second record that you would like to combine with this first record.

It will try to combine the two records (including giving history, touches, special days, and "more info" fields) and then will delete the second record.

To get the version with this new feature, do a "live update" (on the "Online Tools" section of the Donor Manager main menu form).

Let me know if this is what you had in mind, or if you run into any problems.

[Gerryg]

Hi John,

Yes, that is the idea. Since I had only one shot at trying it (only one donor with dual entries) I haven't confirmed this, but I think that it worked backwards. It did combine the two, but the newer address was combined with the older address. I think I made the selection right especting the older addresss to be combined with the newer, but it didn't happen that way. I'll just edit the resulting address tot he correct one. I don't expect that this will happen often.

Also, in the resulting combination, on the Partners>Details>Giving History I now have two lines for 2004. The top line has the giving history for the recent months after the address change and the next line has the previous history for the old address. I expected that the whole year would have been on one line.

You need to spell check your dialog boxes. And, in the Combine Confirmation box it says "do you with to combine" in stead of "do you wish".

Thanks for quick response to this.

Togehter in Him,

Gerry

[jmuehleisen]

Hi Gerry,

Thanks for the feedback. I'll go back in and check the logic in the code, and make sure the data is going the right direction!

And thanks for pointing out the typo. As you can probably guess, my wife is the proofreader in our family!

[ken_prettol]

John, I enjoy using your program--nice work.

This month I received my WBT statement but there were several changes to the zip codes and some regular address changes... So on import the initial screen on input asks if you want to combine records--which works very nice... but I missed a couple of records and it added new ones instead. I searched for that same combine record option screen--but couldn't get back there.

I see a topic on your forum about combining records because of a change on address---that would be the same idea I think... So perhaps that will help in your coding. I didn't see the update you wrote about on Aug 28... Perhaps it is because I can't get the "check for updates" feature to work... It says there is a newer version (I have 5.1111)--but then it gives an error... saying it can't find the file. Not sure if that is a bug or I'm not signed up for the beta testing... I have broadband so I'm always connected.

Thanks again for your great work.

[jmuehleisen]

Ken,

You do indeed need a later version than 5.3111 to get this latest "combine 2 partners" routine.

Since your "live update" isn't working for some reason, go to www.donormanager.com/download.htm and download the 5.31 update version. It will give you 5.3175 and you should be up-to-date then.

I'm curious on the problem you are having with the live update, though. Send me an email at support@donormanager.com and we'll try to figure out the problem. Are you behind a proxy server, perhaps?