[GDuke]

At our office I've designed a handful of report structures in MS Excel and MS Access which work by exporting information from Raiser's Edge to a "source file." When the report needs to be updated, all the user has to do is overwrite the source file and the report structure will take it from there.

Obviously this is an easy process using the Export module in RE, as one can lock the export so that clicking on "Export Now" will always overwrite the same file name. However, there is one report which because of split gift and soft credit issues I must export the file out of the Query module. (I'd like to fix that, but that's a problem for another time.) Every time we do that we must select the source file name manually, which has led to some problems in the past.

Is there a way of changing the default file name that a Query will export to? Unfortunately, the default name RE chooses now won't work because the file must be exported to a shared drive.

Thanks in advance.

Greg

Gregory Duke
Senior Research Associate
Niagara University

[mwittman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by GDuke

At our office I've designed a handful of report structures in MS Excel and MS Access which work by exporting information from Raiser's Edge to a "source file." When the report needs to be updated, all the user has to do is overwrite the source file and the report structure will take it from there.

Obviously this is an easy process using the Export module in RE, as one can lock the export so that clicking on "Export Now" will always overwrite the same file name. However, there is one report which because of split gift and soft credit issues I must export the file out of the Query module. (I'd like to fix that, but that's a problem for another time.) Every time we do that we must select the source file name manually, which has led to some problems in the past.

Is there a way of changing the default file name that a Query will export to? Unfortunately, the default name RE chooses now won't work because the file must be exported to a shared drive.

Thanks in advance.

Greg

Gregory Duke
Senior Research Associate
Niagara University

Greg,

This may not be a full solution, but the steps I use to mitigate inconsistencies in this kind of scenario is to

1. Changes the default export file location: Tools > User Options > File Locations Export/Import Data Files
   This is a user option, so naturally it is set per user.
2. Now you can put put a windows shortcut (.lnk file) in the default export/import directory to the existing exported query file (say, "\\my_server\my_share\my_export.MDB"). Double click the shortcut and say "Yes" to do you want to over-write.

The only way I know of to fully default to the right file name/path is:

1. Always export to a single directory.
2. Always use 8-character + dot + 3-char extension or less file names.
   If the RE Query is named exactly has the intended export file name, then I believe it will all line up (make sure to only use A-Z, 0-9, hyphen or underscore characters in the naming scheme -- spaces will NOT work; rather, they get converted to underscores in the file browse dialog box).
3. In my example above, I would have to name the query and export file something like "my_xport.MDB" to get it down to 12 character limit.

Hope this helps.

[paulmorriss]

If you have the optional "Queue" module you can run a query and get it to go to the file you specify.

[GDuke]

Thanks to both of you for the advice. We're going to try mwhitman's solution #1 after the holiday break, and we're also going to look into getting the "Queue" module, as there are a number of exports we run on a regular basis that could be more easily run overnight.

Thanks again and happy holidays to you.

Greg