Building a Directory

Question

I am helping my sister build a directory from scratch. The information has never been digitally entered; so we are doing that from the beginning. Roughly 250 people with name, address, city, state, zip (then she needs to get: phone numbers, email, office held and date joined)
We want to be able to sort by last name; including last minute inclusions.
We want to format entire directory for a nice printed booklet that will be half of a legal page format.
We want to be able to add photos, if not this year, then next year.
We plan to distribute the booklet as a pdf as well as a printed book.
Our largest problem is what way to input the data so we can sort by last name. We want to be able to import the files into ID. Am I making too much of this? Should we just enter it into ID from the get go? Can we sort in ID? I have NeoOffice on both my Mac and hers.
I am using CS6 and she has CS4.
KaCe

Answer 1

KaCe Whitacre wrote:
I am helping my sister build a directory from scratch. The information has never been digitally entered; so we are doing that from the beginning. Roughly 250 people with name, address, city, state, zip (then she needs to get: phone numbers, email, office held and date joined)
We want to be able to sort by last name; including last minute inclusions.
We want to format entire directory for a nice printed booklet that will be half of a legal page format.
We want to be able to add photos, if not this year, then next year.
We plan to distribute the booklet as a pdf as well as a printed book.
Our largest problem is what way to input the data so we can sort by last name. We want to be able to import the files into ID. Am I making too much of this? Should we just enter it into ID from the get go? Can we sort in ID? I have NeoOffice on both my Mac and hers.
I am using CS6 and she has CS4.
KaCe
You probably want to sort by last name and first name and perhaps even middle initial, not just by last name, so that Zelda Jones comes after Alice Jones.
InDesign does not sort, so your options are:
* Enter and manage the data in a spreadsheet, and export it to Comma Separated Values (CSV), and, as Peter S. says, use the CSV file as the data file for InDesign's Data Merge feature.
* Use a commercial third-party InDesign plug-in, like Active Tables from dtptools.com. It sorts tables, as well as performs many of the most-common spreadsheet formula functions. Then export to CSV. There's a trial available for ID up to CS6. It's not clear if that version will work with the Creative Cloud version.
Whichever spreadsheet tool you choose, consider that you might want to perform some formula manipulations on data. For example, in some cases, ID fails to eliminate blank space and blank lines where a data field is blank, even though the option is enabled. One workaround is to use text functions to manipulate the data fields in the spreadsheet, to combine the present and missing fields into a single new computed field, and use that field in the data merge.
For details on data merge, search Google for terms like "InDesign data merge tutorial," without quotes.
HTH
Regards,
Peter
Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices