International (Non USA) addresses: Data entry, lookup, export and mail merge

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asked May 8, 2016 in How To by bismark
retagged May 8, 2016 by bismark

We have parents and donors in different countries. Each country has it's own standard of the correct way to format an address. Sample list is here: https://www.bitboost.com/ref/international-address-formats.html#Formats .

As an example:
Mr. and Mrs. Thus 'n Such
Kurfirstenstrasse 56
8002 Zürich

Switzerland

What is the correct way to enter the above address in the system? If we put the postal code in the city field (8002 Zurich) and export that used "city, state zip" might work but we now have many copies of the city of Zurich, one per postal code. If we put the code in the zip field it will export as "Zurich, 8002."

Using the first option above yields an interesting result: Google map tries to locate the address in Brooklyn!! (Ignoring the country field).

Is there someway to set the behavior based on country?

Thanks!

 

commented May 8, 2016 by Admin
Why dont you put the postal code in city and zurich in the state column?
commented May 8, 2016 by bismark

As stated in the original question, any mail merge or report that trys to insert "CITY, STATE ZIP" will produce the wrong output.

In the above example the output would wind up as "Zurich, 8002" and not "8002 Zurich."

The goal is not to have a different merge or report for each country and not to have to check for incorrectly formatted addresses and manually correct them.

commented May 8, 2016 by Admin
reshown May 8, 2016 by Berish
That's not correct. If you put 8002 by city and zurich by state it will show 8002, zurich. Try it.
commented May 9, 2016 by bismark
edited May 9, 2016 by bismark

I am not sure what you mean.

As a test I moved the postal code to the zip field.

The fields in the address are {Address1: Kurfirstenstr 56, City: Zurich, Zip: 8002, Country: Switzerland}

I tried the following:

image

Thanks!

1 Answer

answered May 9, 2016 by Admin
selected Aug 9, 2018 by Admin
 
Best answer
Change to  {Address1: Kurfirstenstr 56, City: 8002, State: Zurich, Country: Switzerland}
commented May 9, 2016 by bismark
While it may "get the job done" this isn't much different then putting the Zip in the City field.

It makes data entry and queries counterintuitive.

Note: The image in my last comment in this post was lost so I put in a link to the image instead.

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