Tech Forum

I am new to my calling a few weeks and still learning MLS...The bishop wants a list of all of the birthday list for the youth. I know how to run the report for all of the members. This report doesn't just have to show birthday, it can have other information, but he wants a report that will have upcoming birthday's for each month. The only item close is the Bishop Action list for the youth interviews.

Thank you.

Eric wrote:I am new to my calling a few weeks and still learning MLS...The bishop wants a list of all of the birthday list for the youth. I know how to run the report for all of the members. This report doesn't just have to show birthday, it can have other information, but he wants a report that will have upcoming birthday's for each month. The only item close is the Bishop Action list for the youth interviews.

Thank you.

Look in MLS at Organizations > Reports > Print Rolls and Lists. There you can pick organizations (e.g., Priests, Teachers, Deacons), and the list type (e.g., Birthday, Standard, Abbreviated, Phone). For Birthday lists, you can choose to have the selected organizations listed one after another, or have each organization start on a new page.

If the Bishop wants just a list of birthdays (past, present, future) the easiest way may be to just use the custom report feature and develop a list specifically for that use. All you have to do in the custom report section is choose the appropriate criteria (i.e. ages) then click on the next button and add whatever information he may need such as address, phone, or whatever. I do a lot of custom reports for numerous reasons and I find the custom report section worth it's weight in gold!

If you have never worked with the custom report feature I am sure the stake clerk could help you out. Give it a try.

Jim

Pilotfly wrote:If the Bishop wants just a list of birthdays (past, present, future) the easiest way may be to just use the custom report feature and develop a list specifically for that use. All you have to do in the custom report section is choose the appropriate criteria (i.e. ages) then click on the next button and add whatever information he may need such as address, phone, or whatever. I do a lot of custom reports for numerous reasons and I find the custom report section worth it's weight in gold!

If you have never worked with the custom report feature I am sure the stake clerk could help you out. Give it a try.

The custom reports do have some advantages over the birthday list, although they are a bit trickier to set up. But once they are set up, they are easy to use. The biggest advantage is that they allow you to show people from several classes, merged into one big list ordered by birthday, whereas the birthday lists are separated by class.

If you do use a custom report to generate a birthday list, make sure you do a couple of things:

• In the format page, when you are choosing the columns, make sure you select the "Birthday" column (not to be confused with "Birthdate"). This will produce the birthday with no year, so the list can be sorted properly.
• Make sure the birthday appears first in the "Column Order" list. Custom reports are sorted by the values in the columns, by column order. So putting the Birthday column first will make sure that the rows are sorted by birthday throughout the year.