CS4, Data Merge, creating menu for restaurant

Question

Hey folks.
I am making menu for a restaurant, and i am pretty familiar with Data Merge, but this one is driving me crazy.
The problem is in structure of my data table, CSV. All the tutorials and all the help files are revolving around data which is not broken down into SEGMENTS, rather each row is it's own segment.
For example, all tutorials have:
NAME; DESCRIPTION; PRICE
Food1; Nice food 1; 100
Food2; Nice food 2, 200
Food3; Nice food 3, 300
And what i have is a section name added to this as well, like this:
SECTION NAME; FOOD NAME; DESCRIPTION; PRICE
First section; Food1; Nice food 1; 100
-blank-;Food2; Nice food 2, 200
-blank-;Food3; Nice food 3, 300
Second section; Food1; Nice food 1; 100
-blank-;Food2; Nice food 2, 200
-blank-;Food3; Nice food 3, 300
As you see, some pieces of data are "missing".
So basically what i need InDesign to do is to recognize that section name is something that needs to be filled only once, until it hits another entry in SECTION NAME column.
You have all seen how restaurant menus look like, no need to further explain this i hope. Section name -> lots of data in that section -> New section.
Is that possible at all in InDesign?

Answer 1

Goran,
you can modify your data in InDesign without DataMerge:
- place your CSV file in InDesign as text
- convert it to Table - with ";" as field delimiter
- add new column after first column
you will have something like this:
First section|.|.Food1|.Nice.food.1|.100
-blank-......|.|.Food2|.Nice.food.2|.200
- next step - convert your Table to Text with tab as delimiter
- now replace three tabs "^t^t^t" to "#@#"
First section|.|.Food1|.Nice.food.1|.100
#@#Food2|.Nice.food.2|.200
- now replace two tabs "^t^t" to "#$#^p#@#"
First section#$#
#@#Food1|.Nice.food.1|.100
#@#Food2|.Nice.food.2|.200
- now replace "#@#" to "" (nothing) and apply Item ParagraphStyle
- now replace two tabs "#@#" to "" (nothing)
- now replace "#$#" to "" (nothing) and apply SectionTitle ParagraphStyle
- now replace "#$#" to "" (nothing)
so after all you will have:
First section (with SectionTitle ParagraphStyle)
Food1|.Nice.food.1|.100 (with Item ParagraphStyle)
Food2|.Nice.food.2|.200 (with Item ParagraphStyle)
now you can redefine TabStops in Item ParagraphStyle and play with NestedStyles :)
of course all these setps could be automated ;)
if you are interested - contact me on priv
robin
www.adobescripts.com