We have 2 customer databases - 1 on Microsoft Access with all our customers on since around 1999 & is used for day-to-day customer notes & phonecalls etc & another on Sage which is used solely for the accounts.
We need to send a letter to all of our current customers about recent developments at our company & seems as our Sage is full of customers who are much more current, I'm keen to use the letter creating ability of it to send a letter to all them. This poses a double problem:
None of our customers have titles & so it would mean sending letters to Smith, Jones & McDonald rather than Mr Smith, Mrs Jones & Old McDonald. What I'm thinking is to rename all of our customers as "The Occupier" or something similar and add "Valued Customer" to the contact name (which is currently unused) so that customers get general letters which look fairly professional.
Is there a way I can change all customer names & contacts in 1 hit? If so is there a way of printing letters and then quickly changing all of the details back immediately?
I'm thinking that the best way might be to do a copy of all of our customers onto the demo version & doing it that way, is that an option? Could we install another copy of Sage onto another computer, copy our customers over & alter that 1?
Sorry about the essay. I'm open to all ideas so any advice that can be given will be massively appreciated.
Have you got Sage support? Might be worth ringing them and asking them to help you with report designer. In Customer Reports, there's a client details section - I bet if you rang them, they would help you adapt this report, within report designer, to get a pretty decent CSV file, that you can add titles into, and then import into Access to do your mail shot?
Just a musing (I am nicking that word of Iain... cos its ace!)
I have just had a little play (oo-err) and if you run the customer address list and click edit so that it takes you into report designer - you can move things about,so the address lines appear side by side. It would be trial and error but I reckon you could get there. You can delete telephone and fax, resize the address boxes and fit them all side by side. "save as" a special name that you can quickly spot.
I am just trying to figure out how to get that specially saved report to now appear on my customer details report list so I can generate it and see what it looks like (anyone who knows, feel free to jump in!)
You could export the customer address list to a .csv file in Excel, make all your changes and then import it back in? Probably be a good idea to save the original exported file as it is so that once you have imported the changes into Sage you can then re-import the original file to get it back to how it was.
Imperative to take back-ups every time you do an import so that you can restore original data if necessary. I've had some weird results with importing a .csv file if I haven't got the format just right...lol
You could export the customer address list to a .csv file in Excel, make all your changes and then import it back in? Probably be a good idea to save the original exported file as it is so that once you have imported the changes into Sage you can then re-import the original file to get it back to how it was.
Imperative to take back-ups every time you do an import so that you can restore original data if necessary. I've had some weird results with importing a .csv file if I haven't got the format just right...lol
HI Pauline, thanks for the save as advice - I did give it a unique name, but I think I may need to navigate to the folder you mentioned. Will try!
About the CSV... the customer list comes out with the address lines appearing as so..
address 1
address 2
address 3
And this wouldn't work to import into access - it needs to be
Address 1 Address 2 Address 3
(that's what I am tinkering with a the mo)
Your suggestion is interesting though... If he exports to CSV and then reimports to Sage, instead of Access, would this actually create a Title field on the Customer Record? I have never worked with this particular area before, I just like messing!
Hmm....not sure Michelle. Have you got any other versions of Sage running on your PC? Have you checked the full path that it is saving to? If you look for it manually using windows explorer, can you find it? Path depends on your version, but for my version (2009) it is C: Programdata\Sage\Accounts\2009\Company.000\Reports\Customer\My Customer reports.
With regard to creating a title field on the customer record, no, it won't do this per se, but say your contact name in Sage was John Smith, if you added a Mr. in front of the name in Excel and then re-imported to Sage, the Mr. would be imported.
It'd take a lot more than that to scare me off, I do my best to block out any accounts related thoughts over the weekend
I'm just messing about with Sage at the minute, if I can export the customer names & addresses into excel I should be able to do some sort of mail merge & create a letter that way so thanks for the advice
I've smashed it. I went onto the customer ledger, chose labels, generated a report with the 1st option (Dot Matrix Sales Label (12in sheet)), clicked Export, changed the file type to a CSV file & saved it. There's a bit of legwork to do to get them all in proper order & learn about mailmerge but I'm delighted with how things have turned out.
Glad you cracked it I was going to suggest that you did a separate letter in Word and did a mail merge, but thought you were set on using Sage. If you want some assistance with mail merge, just let me know.
No, I just thought it was the best option because it's so easy to use once set up properly. I've never been comfortable with mail merge but I'll play about with it during the next couple of days & see how I get on, I may well take you up on your kind offer Pauline so thanks for that
