Stake or Ward Phone Directory Template

Does anyone have an easy-to-use template for a Stake and/or Ward phone directory that they can share? I am looking to create a 2008 phone directory, but have heard that the previous ones have taken weeks to put together.

Any suggestions on making a simple, but useful Stake Phone directory out of MLS or from exported MLS data--that is in a smaller format than 8x11?

If anyone does have a good template, I would encourage you to post the template here so others can use it.

Tom

I had a program that took the old MIS data and formatted it into a nice RTF document with heading and everything. There was also a Stake Option where it would format it for printing in the stake directory which was 5.5x8.5. I'll have to see if I can find the source code for it though.

thedqs wrote:I had a program that took the old MIS data and formatted it into a nice RTF document with heading and everything. There was also a Stake Option where it would format it for printing in the stake directory which was 5.5x8.5. I'll have to see if I can find the source code for it though.

It would be wonderful to have a directory template that will do the pagination for booklet and duplex printing in the 5.5 X 8.5 inch format.

Even better would be to have MLS print it out with a range of options to list wards and families in complete format and in phone directory format.

It really does take a few weeks at a couple of hours a day or it take a few days at 4 or 5 hours a day.

Below is the process and a template I developed for our ward earlier this year. I wanted a way to automate it as much as possible from MLS - until I was called, someone typed all the information out by hand, and the layout took 2 pages, I've got it down to 1 page.

This is only going to be usable for wards with <80 active families, (or about 180 if using both sides.)

Also the template is in A4, so to use it on Letter sized paper you'll need to adjust the paper-size, margins and tab-stops (sorry if thats inconvenient, but you American's can put up with it for a change )

1. Create new User-Defined Field called "Phonelist"
2. Create 2 Custom Reports:
   1. Fields: HoH Name & Spouse, Phone, Address, City, Postcode. Criteria: Phonelist=y
   2. Fields: HoH Name & Spouse. Criteria: Phonelist Is Blank
3. For each Head-of-House you want to be on the phonelist set that Field to "y". This allows you to filter out Less-Actives or people who don't want their details on the phonelist.
4. You can use the second report each time to check for families to be added (as well as the move-ins report.)
5. Once your list is correct open the first report, and copy (click on grid, Ctrl-Shift-C) and then paste into the template.
6. Do any tidying up - updating the leadership details, adding families who've just moved in whose records haven't arrived, etc.

In our Ward/Stake/Country the ward and stake geocodes aren't used, so I photocopy a map of our town on the back of the phonelist and put the family's grid-reference into the ward geocode field, and put that in place of the postcode on the custom report. (For families our of town, I put North, West, etc)

I've just finished working on a webpage that converts membership.csv->Google Maps/Google Earth KML, so I can make the map from screenshots of Google Maps with each family 'pin-pointed'. I'll be putting this up in the MLS forum in the next few days.

redzarf wrote:I've just finished working on a web-page that converts membership.csv->Google Maps/Google Earth KML, so I can make the map from screenshots of Google Maps with each family 'pin-pointed'. I'll be putting this up in the MLS forum in the next few days.

Please remember that Church policy currently prohibits the uploading of MLS information to any website not owned by the church. You can keep the information on your own personal computer and run programs from there on the data but you cannot upload it to a server, even if that server doesn't keep track of the information.

Someone has developed a script that does exactly what your proposed for client side use. You can see more about it at [thread=326]GoogleEarth and Membership Data[/thread]

thedqs wrote:Please remember that Church policy currently prohibits the uploading of MLS information to any website not owned by the church. You can keep the information on your own personal computer and run programs from there on the data but you cannot upload it to a server, even if that server doesn't keep track of the information.

Someone has developed a script that does exactly what your proposed for client side use. You can see more about it at [thread=326]GoogleEarth and Membership Data[/thread]

Thanks David. I had already put some explicit usage warnings in my version, including a link to the same thread you had linked to.

Unfortunately the script you linked to doesn't work here in NZ because Yahoo's Geocoder doesn't have street-data for here (but Google does.)

I've posted my version to the forum, you can see it here:
http://tech.lds.org/forum/showthread.php?p=6238

Let me know if you still have any concerns about it, or suggestions on improvements.

Looks good to me, thanks for understanding and making a great tool.

sorry for the double post, but here goes:

Okay, I'm sharing two files here: One Excel spreadsheet and one Publisher template.


Here is the Excel template:
I started with the csv that you can get from your ward website via lds.org. The reason I used this instead of the exported data from MLS is beause it is one family per line instead of one individual per line.

So, start with the csv data and modify it a little to make it formatted like this example. The main changes you'll make are adding ampersands to wives, commas to children, and filenames for family pictures. The pictures will look best if the aspect ratio is 3x4 (I used the MS Office Picture Manager to do that).

Next, here is the Publisher template: This uses Microsoft Publisher's Catalog Merge Wizard to push the Excel data and the pictures into a 'catalog'.

I cram a lot of stuff in there. My goal was to make it more compact. The year before I did it, the folks put six families per page -- I do fourteen. So there are some funny situations:

* I only allow folks to have two phone numbers OR kids. not both
* if they have _lots_ of kids, I only allow one email address.
I tried to make examples for these in my example spreadsheet.

The final product looks somewhat like this (I blurred it to protect my fellow ward members):
(Attachment no longer available)

I add a few more pages with stuff like:
* ward leadership: names and phone numbers
* contact info for stake, family history center, institute
* temple info, hours, etc.
* addresses of missionaries from the ward


When you print it out, Publisher is smart enough to arrange the pages correctly to print 'a' families on the same page as 'z' since this forms a folded booklet style directory.

I am happy to answer any questions. I hope it is useful.


Jonny Sweeny
jsweeny@iu.edu

I know that a few new members have joined since this posting...

Any other ideas on Stake/Ward directory templates for easy creation of a Stake or Ward directory from MLS or LUWS?

I could write a great program to do all this automatically in vba. If I am ever called to be a clerk, I'll make it and post it.

If you have those kinds of skills, it is more like a matter of "when" than of "if.":D

It seems that there would be 2,000+ Stake Clerks that should be anxiously awaiting some sort of a method of formatting either the MLS data or the Stake and Ward website data into a standardized directory. This would serve eliminate innumerable hours spent manually updating Excel spreadsheets in each stake.

I just don't want this one to die on the vine. We've been struggling with it for months and just can't seem to get over the hump. In the meantime we keep getting nudged to go back to the cut/paste/data enter mode.

Help, geklinger

Is there a chance you could repost your templates? It sounds perfect for what I am trying to do, but the links no longer work Kathy

kathaleen1 wrote:Is there a chance you could repost your templates? It sounds perfect for what I am trying to do, but the links no longer work Kathy

I'm guessing you directed this question to jsweeny, who posted a template in this post. I have contacted him, and he graciously sent the files to me, which I have now attached to that post.

For anyone who comes across this thread in the future, they may want to consider the project I've got posted over at sourceforge. The project is called LDS Compact Directory and can be found here: http://ldscompactdir.sf.net

This program can read either MLS or LUWS exported data and churn out a PDF file with very minimal effort. It will attempt to put everything on 1 page front and back. If that would shrink the text too much it forces additional pages. Just check some boxes and mash a button and your on your way.

Check out the page above for more info.

mongi3 wrote:For anyone who comes across this thread in the future, they may want to consider the project I've got posted over at sourceforge. The project is called LDS Compact Directory and can be found here: http://ldscompactdir.sf.net

This program can read either MLS or LUWS exported data and churn out a PDF file with very minimal effort. It will attempt to put everything on 1 page front and back. If it that would shrink the text too much it forces additional pages. Just check some boxes and mash a button and your on your way.

Check out the page above for more info.

Looks like a good program. There are some issues that need to be fixed. Those are best addressed at the web site rather than here in these forums.

Edit: I have provided five bugs for the program at the sourceforge bug tracking for the program.

mongi3 wrote:For anyone who comes across this thread in the future, they may want to consider the project I've got posted over at sourceforge. The project is called LDS Compact Directory and can be found here: http://ldscompactdir.sf.net

It did a good job for me. Thanks!

Thanks for the program. It does a nice job. Would be great if it could also bring down photos from the LUWS. I have to maintain a directory with MLS data + photos from the site manually.

I developed a way to produce a ward directory using mostly freeware for Windows, and what's not free is available on a ward computer:
* Picasa (for cropping and retouching)
* FastStone Image Viewer (for creating contact sheets)
* Word (or OpenOffice, but I don't have instructions for it) to assemble the directory and add other content
* doPDF (to create a PDF)

Members' photos are JPG's, their names are the filename, and additional information can be added as JPEG comments (in FastStone, also requiring a small configuration change). And one could use ReNamer to swap the first and last names--I have presets for that, if desired.

The template is a .doc, and I've written instructions for configuring and for the creation process, I've saved a settings file for FastStone (some options are quite cumbersome to adjust correctly), and I've created placeholder images for missing photos (male and female).

Even though I'll still tweak something now and then, the process is solid (even though most of the software used could be improved). Because of the high turnover in my ward (weekly move-ins and/or -outs), I've created a new directory every two months, having started in March of this year, and it only takes me couple hours to do; and that time could be cut down dramatically if I made little changes as they came.

Note that FastStone is not available at the additional software download site for administrative computers. It may have been purchased locally. These are the additional programs available at that site.

Adobe Flash Player (2MB) Allows the Record-keeping and Auditing Training to operate properly on the local unit computer.
CutePDF™ Writer (2MB-Writer & 5MB-Converter) Print driver for documents to be printed from MLS and other applications in PDF file format to save paper and toner use.
OpenOffice (108MB) Office suite including word processing, spreadsheet, math program, database manager, drawing and instructional presentation software.
Picasa™ (5MB) Photo image editing tool that assists in sizing ward website photos.
PhotoFiltre (2MB) Photo image editing tool that assists in sizing ward website photos.
The Scriptures (CD-ROM Edition) (428MB) Online scriptures for the local unit computer.
Eraser (16 bit) or Eraser (32 bit)

mongi3 wrote:For anyone who comes across this thread in the future, they may want to consider the project I've got posted over at sourceforge. The project is called LDS Compact Directory and can be found here: http://ldscompactdir.sf.net

This program can read either MLS or LUWS exported data and churn out a PDF file with very minimal effort. It will attempt to put everything on 1 page front and back. If that would shrink the text too much it forces additional pages. Just check some boxes and mash a button and your on your way.

Check out the page above for more info.

I bolded the line in the quote because it is true. What a slick easy tool. This should just be a feature built right into MLS. It even works with the new format of the MLS 3.1 export files.
Thanks for creating this tool, it's great.:)

I've had to create several Picture Directories for student Wards, and I thought I would put this template out there so people don't have to keep reinventing the wheel. I've built it in MS Word so everyone should be have access to upload it. It's nothing fancy, but it is exactly what you need to get the job done. I hope you find this useful.

I am currently developing a software program to reduce the amount of time it takes to get the StaKe Directory ready for a commercial printer. As of July 2010 I can reduce the time to get the member data into form by 90%. Please visit my website www.4cadi.com if you are interested.

Stan Ruggio