6.2.1 Composing Letters

From any list of members, select the ones that you wish to create a Letter for. Choose Send Letter from the drop-down list below the table and press the Do with selected button.

Basic text formatting can be done using the buttons above the main body of the Letter.  

 

• The list of member names is displayed in the To This is for information only, they cannot be changed here. If you wish to remove or add names, you will need to cancel the letter by clicking your internet browser’s back arrow to return to the previous page.
  
  
• The Tokens listed on the right side of the browser can be used in the text to personalise the letter, e.g. typing #FAM customises every letter with the member’s Familiar Name (or Forename if a Familiar Name is not recorded).
  
  
• Website links can be inserted by clicking the Chain icon, as described in the Email section (see 6.1.1).

You can vary the line spacing in the letter by using hard or soft returns:

• A Hard Return (using Enter) gives a full line space before the next line of text.
  
  
• A Soft Return (using Shift+Enter) will put the following words on a separate line immediately below the preceding text.

After you have finished composing the letter press Download to generate the letters in a pdf file (one page per member).

Note: Please be aware that there is no ‘spell check’ in Beacon. Also, if the Send Letter page is left open for a long time it may time out. Therefore long letters are best composed in a document outside of Beacon before copy and pasting into Beacon.

Standard Letter Templates
If you create letters regularly they can be saved as standard templates and recalled for use again later as described in section 6.2.2.