Filter Deceased Spouses in Export
When creating an export, I would like to be able to exclude the spouse names if the spouse is deceased. Currently, I export the "spouse deceased field" and clean it up after. Otherwise, people may do things like make phone calls or a rsvp list using both names or they assume our data doesn't reflect the person is deceased. It would be great when you choose spouse name in export to have a prompt asking if you want to include the deceased.
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Guest
- Aug 8 2012
Related ideas
Yes, I agree - this function would be extremely helpful. I assumed deceased spouses were suppressed and had two donors contact me after an appeal mailing.
Carrie, if you search the forums you'll find some posts discussing dealing with deceased spouses. For us, we unclick the spouse box and the addressee/salutations are automatically changed. Can leave relationship/reciprocal if you want. Personally I don't want any add/sal on the record to include deceased person. Could accidentally get used in export but also in mail or anywhere else.
While your suggestion makes sense, I think the issue can be addresseed in RE as it's structured. jUst my opinion
I agree with Carrie; this dangerous situation could be avoided by having an automatic prompt put in. There are many times we want to include the spouse, if the spouse is alive. However, if we export the spouse name, we don't know if they are alive or deceased unless we also export the 'spouse deceased' field. We then have to remove the deceased spouses so they aren't called or mailed to.
I am with Joann on this one. If the spouse fies - a widow/er no longer has a spouse. Uncheck the spouse button.
When you say uncheck the spouse button, do you mean completely remove the person's name from the Spouse field on the Bio1 tab and just retain the link as a relationship on the Relationship tab (preferably as former or deceased spouse)? My Spouse box is grayed out and I can't select it. Fairly new RE user--switching from Advance has been traumatic! :)
L. Robbins - yes. But you can only do this if you are on the relationship tab and open the spouse relationship. If you open it from Bio 1 you can not unselect the spouse checkbox.
We recently did a mailing that accidentally almost included a letter to a board member's deceased spouse! Not good! I need this badly. In reading the comments below, my office has never started un-checking the spouse box from Relationships until this year, and now that means we are inconsistent with the rest of the database. We do not have the staff to be able to go "clean" this up in the database. How many other offices are in this same situation? It just makes sense to me that if there's an option for us to choose to be able to include primary records that are marked deceased or not, then there should also be an option regarding the spouse record. I could see this also being useful in a donor wall situation, where you need to be able to still pull the spouse's name, deceased or not, and you might be unable to do that if the spouse box is un-checked.