Search for constituents without email

Creating a search for constituents with blank email fields

There are a variety of situations when you need to search for constituents with nothing in their email address fields. These include:

  • Looking for people to exclude from an email blast
  • Preparing a list of people you want to acquire email addresses from in the coming year

When attempting a search like this, most people follow these steps: 1) navigate to Constituents, 2) select "Email", and then 3) look for an "is blank" option. This seems like the right way to set up the search, but in this case it does not work. Asking LGL to find "is blank" when the field has no value has the same result as trying to divide 0 by 0: an error.

Fortunately, the solution is not too difficult. Here are the steps:

  1. Navigate to the Constituents tab
  2. Leave "Names" as the search criteria and leave the "contain" entry field blank. The key is to search for everyone in your account
  3. Click on "Advanced options" and select "Add nested/sub query". Choose "And not"
  4. Select "Email" and then select "is not blank"
  5. Click the Search button

What this accomplishes is: a) searching for everyone in the LGL account and b) suppressing anyone who has an email address. You're left with only those whose record does not contain an email address.