Sorting membership lists by ZIP Code

[jwtaber]

My stake clerk has passed along a request from our mission president:

"President Murray . . . would like to have a directory of all members that was sorted by Unit and by family to include their names, birthdates and addresses with zip codes in the Wilmington Delaware Stake. He is asking all Stakes in the Mission to provide their entire membership data in that directory format. I understand MLS has such a directory, but do not know how to download / export to an excel spreadsheet to provide it to him."

Generating a directory in CSV or XLS that just has the parents' names, and is sortable by zip, I can do. The CSV file that is downloaded from the ward websites has everyone's first name, but no ages or birth dates, and the ZIP code isn't in its own field (nor is it consistently in one field.)

The Directory of Members, of course, has all the necessary data. Is there a way to sort that by postal code and export it? Can anyone think of another way to pull this off (in MLS 2.8)?

Thanks for any help you can provide
John Taber
Assistant Stake Clerk (Membership etc.)
Wilmington Delaware Stake

[opee]

I can think of 2 options to solve your problem:

(1) Export the Directory and let Excel do the sorting
(2) Create a Custom Report with the information that you want, and "Save File" to export as CSV.

[russellhltn]

It's probably just me, but the first thing I'd do is have a talk with my Bishop/Stake President on his thoughts on giving the information to the Mission President. The birthdate thing rubs me the wrong way.

[jwtaber]

I can think of 2 options to solve your problem:

(1) Export the Directory and let Excel do the sorting
(2) Create a Custom Report with the information that you want, and "Save File" to export as CSV.

I started thinking harder about this after I posted, and I came up with a similar answer. Thanks, though.

[jwtaber]

It's probably just me, but the first thing I'd do is have a talk with my Bishop/Stake President on his thoughts on giving the information to the Mission President. The birthdate thing rubs me the wrong way.

It has me scratching my head too, and not just because it makes the custom report a bit more complicated. I'm not meeting with the stake clerk until Thursday - I'm goiing to bounce this off the stake president in the meantime.

[opee]

It's probably just me, but the first thing I'd do is have a talk with my Bishop/Stake President on his thoughts on giving the information to the Mission President. The birthdate thing rubs me the wrong way.

My guess is that the Mission President would like to know the ages of the members to know if they are children, youth, or adults. I don't see an issue with giving the ages--if that is the purpose--it would mean probably more than a birthdate.

[russellhltn]

My guess is that the Mission President would like to know the ages of the members to know if they are children, youth, or adults. I don't see an issue with giving the ages--if that is the purpose--it would mean probably more than a birthdate.

Although even including in the list the smaller kids ("all") still leaves me scratching my head. <shrug>

He may have been trying to keep his request simple. But the combination of "all" and "birthdate" are causing me to make some funny faces to myself. If I was put in that positions as a clerk, I'd be asking my Bishop/SP/Stake Clerk about it. But I don't think it's worth speculating about.

I wouldn't have any problem helping him to get access to LUWS. That way he knows who the leaders are and how to contact anyone he wants. And he could download household information for a mail-out from there. Seems like that would be a better solution.

[jwtaber]

It looks like the table generated by "File" / "Export" does the job in terms of sortable data - including keeping households together. I'm going to check with the stake clerk and stake president before sending anything to the mission president - there may be a little too much here.

Thanks for your help.

John Taber