Is there any way to trim down the fields that are exported in an acknowledgement report spreadsheet? Ours spits out 70 columns, when I only need about 15 of them. I looked at the menu that appears when you click "Edit Report", but it was all Greek to me.
Hi Jamie,
Are you referring to the Print Acknowledgement Letters utility, or to a different report? Clicking "Edit Report" shows you the name, description, and parameters that have been configured for the report, but you cannot edit the output from there. There's a procedure that backs that utility, and that is what dictates the data that is output. Typically, if you want to customize the output of a report, you would make a copy of the report and procedure, and edit the copy, otherwise all your hard work will be overwritten in the next upgrade. That said, if you are indeed talking about the Print Acknowledgement Letters utility, I'd strongly recommend against making any customizations, as the utility actually changes data when it's run and altering utilities is not something to be taken lightly.
If you are generating letters with this data, a custom acknowledgement letter format that only includes the data you want, is much easier to create than customizing a utility. The acknowledgement format would also enable you to skip the whole Excel/import step.
If you're not generating letters, then a better solution might be to create an Output Set that only includes the data you want. You could run that after the utility is finished and save to Excel. You might need to create a custom output element or two, but again, much easier than customizing a utility.
Regardless of what you are looking to achieve, I'd recommend reaching out to support to discussion your options. They can offer guidance and advice about how to best achieve your goals.
Hope that helps!
Meaghan
Years ago we paid Tessitura to customize the standard Print Acknowledgement Letter utility for us and we chose not to include many of the 70 columns of data as we didn't need them for the letters either. We got it down to about 46 columns. And then a few years later we customized it further and got it down to about 26. We run our custom Print Ack. Letters utility, save the output to Excel, and do a mail merge with Word, print and mail the letters. Several years ago our internal IT dept. didn't have the time or knowledge to do this kind of work for us. I think they do now so if we would like to remove even more columns in the future, we would just use them. I don't know what your IT Support is like or you'd have to use Tessitura. Good luck!