[lpmcneill]

I have recently become the database manager in a school's development office.

My question is:

I have several records entered with the student's father as the individual and the mother listed as a spouse relationship record. However, we actually want any female parent that is also an alumnus to be the primary record/individual.

Is there a way to somehow copy the father's record and edit this copy to become the mother's individual record and then make the father a spouse relationship with out doing EVERYTHING from scratch?

[SLewis]

You should be able to go into the record - then click on the spouse. Within the spouse's record there is a tab titled relationship - in the drop down box choose Add this individual as a Constituent.
I would also make a default so that once it has created the person you can load the default and not have to enter everything that you know will be the same like attributes.
Does this make any sense? or where you wanting a way to not have to open each record to do that?

[lpmcneill]

I don't mind entering each record to make the individual. So, adding the the individual as a constituent in the spouse drop down box will also transfer over the address, salutations, etc?

More importantly, tell me more about creating a default. I think that would really help me a great deal! Can you create multiple defaults (ex. New Parent, alumni, etc)? And how do you load the defaults?

I hope this is not too many questions. I think that the last person in this position may have done several things the loooong way.

Lisa

[Anne Marie]

Hello and welcome!

Once you have the two as constituents, you can merge the info from one to another - attributes, gifts, appeals and so on.

So if you wanted to transfer all the gifts etc. from Mr's record to Mrs' you could merge them. This is done in admin.

[SLewis]

This is what I do.
When you add the spouse as a record through the Add this Individual as a Constituent - It transfers over address as well as phone/email/links

Here is how I do load default.
When you above person you have to choose constituent code - so for defaults on this one type I make sure not to add the constituency code (to cut out duplicates). (FYI for my staff I have then load defualts each time they add someone we have defaults like New Record - Male, New Record - Female, Alumni Record - Male, Pastor, Honorarium, Ackowledgee.
Constituent tab - choose Load Defaults from . . .
Choose New - go through all the tabs and add as much generic info as you feel comfortable with.
Let me know if you need more info.