How to create a sacramental certificate
This article gives instructions to show how to create, save, and print a sacramental certificate for a member.
If you would like to pull Sacrament data into any certificate or notification, please begin the process in Add/Edit Sacrament in the Sacraments tab.
- Example of a sacramental certificate
- From where does the information in a sacramental certificate come?
- How to create a sacramental certificate
- How to print your sacramental certificates
Example of a Sacramental Certificate
From where does the information in a sacramental certificate come?
When you create a certificate, the information is retrieved from two places:
- the member's Member Details record.
- the member's sacramental record.
Bring the information up to date and produce a completed certificate as follows:
How to create a sacramental certificate
- In the Family Directory, click Sacraments. Select Add/Edit Sacraments to display the Sacraments page.
- Locate the desired sacramental record by entering filter criteria and then searching your database for the member's sacramental record.
- From the Sacrament menu, select the type of sacrament. For example, Baptism.
- Type the last name of the member, maiden name (if applicable), or the first name in the filter fields provided.
- If you know the date or the date range when the sacrament was conferred, select the Include Date Range link and then select a date or date range from the calendar. Select the Remove link to remove a date or date range from your search.
- Click Search:
- Select the check-box for each member for whom you want to create a certificate. Then, click Mail Merge,
and select the merge option that shows the number of selected records.
- Select the option for Merge Selected Records.
- The Mail Merge window opens: The certificate templates are located in the ParishSOFT templates folder.
- Select ParishSOFT Templates to open the folder containing the sacrament templates that ParishSOFT provides:
ParishSOFT provides more than one template for each type of sacrament. The template with "Parish Detail" suffix includes the parish address (that is, the parish name, city, and state/region) once.
- To open a template, click its name link.
- Select the Mail Merge tab.
- Click View Merged Data.
The merge fields in the document are replaced with actual data from the records of individuals you selected in the grid. The first recipient's copy of the certificate is displayed.
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If you have multiple recipients, click Next Record to view the next recipient's copy. Continue in this manner until you finish previewing each recipient's copy of the certificate, making sure that each one is correct.
Finalize the merge by completing these steps:- On the Mail Merge tab, click Merge to File:
- From the Merge mode dropdown list, select New Section to start each recipient's certificate on a separate page.
- From the Choose file type dropdown list, select the document's file type. Mail Merge supports these file types:
- .doc and .docx: a Microsoft Word document file. This file is readable by Microsoft Word only.
- .rtf: Rich Text Format file. This file is readable by most word processing programs in different operating environments and with different operating systems.
- .txt: a plain text file. This file is readable by any text editing or word processing program.
- Click OK to close the Merge to File window.
- On the Mail Merge tab, click Merge to File:
The software downloads the file containing all of the certificates to your computer.
How to print your sacramental certificate
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Navigate to the location on your computer where you downloaded the file containing the certificates.
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Open the file.
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From the File menu, select the Print option to print the file.
Each certificate is printed on a separate page.
Related Articles
How to edit a sacramental record from the sacraments page
How to view or update a member's record
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