Once you have determined who you’ll be writing a letter to, click the LETTERS icon from the Search screen or WRITE LETTER button from a report. The Letters window will be displayed for you to compose and print your letter. The window is made up of three different areas.
Template area - lists all saved templates.
Addressing options – allows you to select how the letters should be addressed. Should the letter be addressed to each individual in the list or to each family in the list?
Word Processor - the main part of the window and is used to compose your letter.
Template
The upper left corner of the Letters window is the template area. This area contains all the letters that have been saved as templates. To use a template, highlight the name from this list. The letter will be displayed in the word processing area. You may make any changes necessary, and click PRINT MERGE to print the letters.
Address Options
Before you begin composing your letter, you’ll want to decide who the letter should be addressed to. Will it be addressed to each individual in the list? Or, will it be addressed to the family? Next, choose if you’d like to use formal titles or the first names. Mark your selection. Notice the address block and salutation change based on what you’ve chose here.
Word Processor
The word processor in Roll Call is very similar to other word processors such as Microsoft Word or Word Perfect.
Note the menu bar items: File, Edit, View, Insert, Style, etc. Underneath the menu items are icons for the commonly used features such as New, Open, Save, Print Preview, Print, etc. If you place your cursor over the icon, a text description is displayed for the icon’s function.
To compose your letter, begin typing underneath the salutation. If you would like to pull in data from Roll Call you can use the Insert function. When your cursor is at the point in the letter that you would like to insert some data, select Insert>4D Expression from the word processing menu. Double click on the field you’d like inserted.
If you compose your letter in a different word processor and want to copy and paste into Roll Call, make sure to save the original document in a rich text format before doing the copy. If you do not save as a text document first, the formatting characters from the word processor will interfere with the proper formatting in Roll Call.
When you are ready to print your letters, click PRINT MERGE. A letter will be generated for each person or family in your list. Once you send the letters to the printer, you’ll be prompted to save a record of this correspondence in the person’s record. If you’d like to record this, answer yes. The correspondence will be noted in the Letters section of the People screen.
If you’d like to save this letter for use in the future, select File>Save as Template from the word processing menu. You’ll be prompted to name the template.