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Author: Kristenson, Joel
Last Updated: 2016-10-25
Overview
This article will teach you how to export your records as households by combing people who share the same home address.
Tip: You can still run this utility if you haven’t householded your database, but for the best results it’s worthwhile to take the time to fully household your database. If your database is really large, or the data is not consistent this project will likely take some time. If you have already householded your database, you can run this process directly from the Households list which allows for more flexibility on what columns to export. Here's an example:
Steps
Navigate to the Voters (Donors/Contacts) list under the Application Menu.
Build and run your search query (make sure you load all results if the list is over 1k). In my example I searched for anyone in my database who lived in the state of Minnesota which produced 66,341 records.
Click the File drop-down menu and select Utilities > Export. You must have appropriate security clearance.
*If you’ve householded your database you should choose the ‘Combine by Household’ option which will use the households you’ve created and most likely customized.
*If you haven’t householded your database you’ll choose the ‘Combine by Home Address’ option. In this example I selected the Combine by Home Address option.
Click [OK] after selecting your export preference.
You’ll get a load animation as the utility runs. If you’re exporting hundreds of thousands or millions of records this could take awhile.
Choose the location on your machine to save the file to, create a name (don’t use special characters), and click [OK]. Make sure you leave the file type as a .CSV. My example is below where I saved it to my desktop.
You’ll get another load animation as the file exports.
When the export is finished you’ll get a popup message with the results. Click [OK] to finish. Typically the record count would drop substantially, if you have a lot of households in your list. In my example the final list was 37,861 records.
Locate the file on your local machine and open it in the program of your choosing (i.e. Excel, or Numbers). In my example it was on the desktop and I used MS Excel.
The spreadsheet will contain a lot of information by default, notably the Household columns which can be used on envelopes/labels if you’re running a mail-merge campaign. My example is below.
It’s not a bad idea to remove columns you don’t need, adjust the formatting of the spreadsheet, and save the file as an .xlsx so that it retains formatting.
Steps to Export from ‘Households’ List
In order to export from Households you’ll
first need to household
your database. Once that’s complete,
navigate to the Households list, and
run your search query. In this
example I populated all household
records which provided 2,396
records.
To add/remove columns of information
that you want you’ll click on the [Format]
drop-down and select columns. For more information on formatting read this
article, and watch this
video. For info on formatting with
joined tables, watch this
video.
The default table that’s selected will be households. This has information tied to the household
record but not each member of the household.
Example below.
In order to pull in information related
to the household members you’ll need
to select the joined tables in the bottom-left of the screen and then the
relevant columns on the right. Example below.
Here’s an example of adding in address
information.
Once you’re finished going through the
joined tables, click [OK] to add/remove
the columns into the grid.
My finished example is below. The
columns will be added to the far right of the grid. You can rearrange them as needed by dragging them left-or-right.
If you want you can now save the
format, and assign it as a default from the [Format] drop-down menu.
The related resources below provide links to a wide variety of similar articles and videos on this topic.
Related Resources
Article: Additional Service – NCOA Append
Article: Managing Households – Creating, Deleting and Re-Creating
Article: How to Print Household Labels
Article: Creating your Own Custom Relationship Types – 2016 Upgrade
Article: Splitting ‘Couples’ into Separate Records En Masse using the Built-In Utility
Article: How to Split a Single Contact Record into a Duplicate Contact Record for Householding a Couple
Article: How to Create a Year-End Tax Letter Addressed to Individuals or the Entire Household using Merge Fields – Nonprofit Only
Article: How to Set an Attribute for All Members of a Household En Masse
Article: Exporting Data (Spreadsheets) to your Mac, from the Remote Desktop App – Mapping Drives
Article: How to Configure your RDP (Remote Desktop) Settings on a PC to Allow Access to your Clipboard, and Disk Drives
Article: Creating and Saving Default Formats for Reporting with the Grid
Video: Households – Delete and Recreate
Video: Households – Combine More Than 5 Members
Video: Households – Drag n Drop
Video: Households – What To Do B4 Householding!!
Video: Reporting 102 – Quick Reports and Exports
Video: Reporting 104 – Joined Tables
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