Your Membership list Guide to using Membership lists A maximum of five Committee Members per Local Group can be given website editing rights and there are two types of access available: senior rights allow you to create, edit and delete pages and articles, send communications and access the Membership lists. Senior rights are limited to two Committee Members per Local Group junior rights allow you to create, edit and delete pages and articles and send communications. It is very important that Committee Members who have access to the Membership lists understand the Data Protection Act requirements as they are responsible for ensuring that they treat all data properly and in line with the data protection principles regardless of where the information has originated from. For further guidance please see the Data Protection Policy in section 6 of the Handbook. Accessing and Using your Membership Lists This is where you can access your Local Group s Membership lists. Link to Export all Members Link to Export new Members Filter Quick glance at all Members limited to 10
Using the quick glance As you can see above you get an instant quick glance of Members in your area based on ten Members per page. You can search through this list by using the filter. Simply enter the First Name, Surname or Postcode area you wish to search by. To see the full information on Members and for mail merges click on the Export tabs. Opening the Members List spreadsheet If you click on the link to Export all Members or new Members, a new window will open. Click on OK and a spreadsheet will open listing all appropriate Members. Using the spreadsheet Regardless of which spreadsheet you open the format will be the same. As you can see below, some of the data shows as ##### (in columns L and M) because the columns need to be expanded The easiest way to do this is by selecting all, which you do by clicking your cursor in the top left hand corner square here. All columns and rows should go blue. Then, put your cursor on the line between column A and B (when in the right place it should change shape to crossed arrows). Double click with your left hand mouse and all columns will be distributed equally and the ###### will be replaced with accurate data. You can move the columns and sort the data as you wish.
What is a mail merge? Mail Merge is a powerful tool for writing and sending a personalised letter or email to many different people at the same time. You can also use it to create envelopes or labels with each recipient s information. Mail merge imports data from another source such as Excel and then uses that data to replace placeholders throughout your message with the relevant information for each individual you are messaging. You can use it to quickly create personalised messages for hundreds of people at once. If you are using the Membership list to do a mail merge, either for letters or labels for envelopes, then you need to ensure that the fields you have on the document to be merged match the fields that are on the Membership list. Please note that the examples below are all based on using Microsoft Excel on a PC. You will not be able to do a mail merge on a tablet. So in the example above you would want to make sure that in the document you re merging into you have the following fields: Title, First Name, Surname, Street address, Town, County, Postcode. You can make sure you match the records using the mail merge menu in word, see the screen shots below.
Once you ve matched your fields you can also check for any errors during the mail merge. You will be a given a choice of how you want the errors to be reported, see below: When you have rectified any errors that you may have had during the mail merge you can then finish and complete the mail merge. The documents will then be merged into a new document which you can then save and print off. You may find it easier to set up a labels template and some letter templates that you can just change each time you use them and then attach the new Membership lists and merge.
You will get three options of lists you can use; you can type a new list, use an existing list or choose from Outlook contacts. We recommend downloading your current Membership list selecting the Use an existing list option from the drop down list and attaching the Membership list that you have downloaded. Please ensure that you save the list in a safe and secure place and delete the list once you have sent the mail merge. Using templates and only downloading and saving your Membership lists as and when you need them to use in a mail merge will make it quicker and easier for you to send out letters and newsletters to your Members. However please remember that if you re sending an electronic communication you don t need to save your Membership lists as you can either copy and paste the email address into an email using the BCC field or send an alert or newsletter to your Members using the Local Group webpage. There is a separate guide to sending communications to your Members and a guide to writing a Local Group newsletter.