Our development team has been having trouble exporting a householded mailing list to mail merge in InDesign. We can get the householded list with the mail merge button, but it won’t export all the fields we need — it wants to use the built-in mail merge feature, it seems — and we can export all the fields we want with a standard export, but then the contacts aren’t householded. It may be the path of least resistance is switching to using .docx templates instead of our nicely designed InDesign template, but I’m wondering if folks have figured out the right recipe for exporting the list we need?
Solved
How do you export a householded mailing list to do a merge outside of EA?
Best answer by torvic vardamis
Hi
After choosing Householded Mailing List, click Customize. You’ll see options to tailor the file for your mail merge, including:
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Householding: choose “Include one record per address” (great for true household mailings).
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Household Label: pick your preferred style (e.g., “The Smith Family”).
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Middle Name: full / initial / omit.
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Checkboxes to Include Phone, Exclude uncertified USPS addresses, and Export address lines 1–3 into separate columns.
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File Type: pick Text File for a tab-delimited file that InDesign’s Data Merge can read; or export to Excel and save as CSV if you prefer.
A couple of quick tips for InDesign, and you might already know this:
-
Make sure the first row contains clear field names; that’s what Data Merge uses for placeholders.
-
If you need a field that isn’t part of the Householded export, a simple workaround is to export the Householded file and a Standard export keyed by a shared value (e.g., VANID or address), then bring the extra columns over with XLOOKUP/VLOOKUP before you merge.
This lets you keep your designed InDesign template while still getting one row per mailable household and the fields you care about. Hope that helps, and happy merging!
Best,
Torvic Vardamis (he/him/his)
Senior Manager, Professional Services
+2Hi
After choosing Householded Mailing List, click Customize. You’ll see options to tailor the file for your mail merge, including:
-
Householding: choose “Include one record per address” (great for true household mailings).
-
Household Label: pick your preferred style (e.g., “The Smith Family”).
-
Middle Name: full / initial / omit.
-
Checkboxes to Include Phone, Exclude uncertified USPS addresses, and Export address lines 1–3 into separate columns.
-
File Type: pick Text File for a tab-delimited file that InDesign’s Data Merge can read; or export to Excel and save as CSV if you prefer.
A couple of quick tips for InDesign, and you might already know this:
-
Make sure the first row contains clear field names; that’s what Data Merge uses for placeholders.
-
If you need a field that isn’t part of the Householded export, a simple workaround is to export the Householded file and a Standard export keyed by a shared value (e.g., VANID or address), then bring the extra columns over with XLOOKUP/VLOOKUP before you merge.
This lets you keep your designed InDesign template while still getting one row per mailable household and the fields you care about. Hope that helps, and happy merging!
Best,
Torvic Vardamis (he/him/his)
Senior Manager, Professional Services
I think the challenge we had was not being able to include non-mailing data like ‘most recent contribution amount’ and ‘most recent contribution date.’ Perhaps the XLOOKUP/VLOOKUP solution would do the trick. We’ll have to give it a try. Looks like we might be doing more learning in Excel here too.
+1I think the challenge we had was not being able to include non-mailing data like ‘most recent contribution amount’ and ‘most recent contribution date.’ Perhaps the XLOOKUP/VLOOKUP solution would do the trick. We’ll have to give it a try. Looks like we might be doing more learning in Excel here too.
I wonder if Bonterra Que (or future AI helpers built into EveryAction) could make this easier in the future. It would be easier to say to EveryAction “generate a householded mailing file and include MRC amount and date” and let the X-looking-up be done by the machine.
I haven’t really explored Bonterra Que — I don’t know if it can do more, functionally, than EA currently can, or if it’s more of a helper within existing constraints to recommend solutions and generate insights.
+1I haven’t really explored Bonterra Que — I don’t know if it can do more, functionally, than EA currently can, or if it’s more of a helper within existing constraints to recommend solutions and generate insights.
I’m interested in testing it out, although I don’t see a Try Bonterra Que opt-in banner on my EveryAction dashboard. I think this conversational/agentic AI interface is rapidly becoming standard for databases and even if Bonterra Que can’t accomplish this specific use case right now, it will be able to soon. It’s new and in beta now, and next year Bonterra will start to charge for it, so it’s probably worth trying it out for free while we all can!
+1I haven’t really explored Bonterra Que — I don’t know if it can do more, functionally, than EA currently can, or if it’s more of a helper within existing constraints to recommend solutions and generate insights.
@melissa instead of using Expots, have you tried the Contribution Aggregate Report? That report allows you to get Financial Household names, addresses, and salutations, and also allows you to include MRC dates and amounts.
+1Let me know if it ends up working for you!
I like the Reports user interface more than Exports and prefer to get my data via Reports whenever possible. I’m curious whether any Bonterran can give us insight into the history of Exports vs. Reports and what the future holds.
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