Forum Discussion
Extract a subset of data from one sheet and copy to another sheet
May I make an alternative suggestion for meeting your need.
First let me ask a question, though. I looked at your sample file, and see nothing there that indicates that a person IS someone who has committed to nominate you. Do you have such a column? If not, add one. Call it say, "Nominator" or something to that effect. And keep it up=to-date, with "Y" entered into the column to indicate "Yes, a supporter." Then add another column--"LetterSent" or something to that effect. Fill this with a "Y" after you've sent a letter to them.
Then, keeping the single database, use Word's MailMerge function--where you can access this Excel file as your source--with those two fields to indicate "Nominator" and "LetterSent" used to filter which letters to send today:
- with the former always "Y"--which sifts out those who haven't pledged to nominate;
- and the latter set to include only those who are blank--
Use Mail Merge to print the personalized letter, to print address labels (Word will even do the sexy bar code for the zip code)... if you really get fancy, you can add conditional paragraphs thanking those who've donated, but leaving the paragraph out of those who support but haven't contributed....
After you've sent the letter to the 25 new names, you update their records (filtering your Excel database as above) and change the "LetterSent" field to "Y". Easily done in mass, by entering it once and copy....paste down the rest.
That way if somebody changes their mind, decides not to nominate, or whatever, you make a single change in the sole database and you're up-to-date.
Principle: It's always better, from a data integrity point of view, to have a single database. Update fields in that to indicate status. Update addresses in one place. Update marital status (if that's part of your data) in one place. Don't make copies or extracts. You will run into problems with data getting out of sync.
MailMerge can be tricky the first time or two, but you (or your staff) will quickly get the hang of it. And your database will thank you.
You are absolutely right! Now when you say it, the answer seems obvious! You clearly get what I am trying to do. I am running for Council in my town of 40,000. The state gives one access to all the registered voters in town 32,600 ( a bogus number as the state doesn't scrub the data of those who have moved or died). I have to get 400 petitions signed to get on the ballot (1% of registered voters plus a cushion of extras if a nominating petition is invalidated). When someone signs my petition I want to send them a thank you note and highlight them in the database so I know they are a potential supporter of me. Then if I collect enough signatures to get on the ballot, I will continue to contact these folks asking for their vote. Thank you so much for your help.
- You're very welcome. I never realized it was possible to get such a list of all registered voters in a given district. That in itself is kind of surprising in this day when there's so much concern about privacy. Do you need to be a certified candidate to have access or can any citizen request it? [I'm not looking for it; just wondering what kind of privacy protection NJ townships provide.]
I guess it is public information. I got it from the county board of elections. I was not any kind of official anything.
Thanks for all your help!