Data merge with conditional text

I'm new to InDesign scripting. Very new, in fact. I'm willing to learn, but my main motivation at present is to solve a particular issue. Surely this issue has come up before. I'd love to know if anybody has encountered it or if it is possible to accomplish through scripting.
I want to merge data onto a gift pledge card. The exact text on the gift card will depend on the data being imported. For example, somebody who has given in the past will receive a message such as, "Thank you for your gift of $xxx." However, a person who has NOT given into the past will receive the message, "Please consider giving this year." The condition is the field prior_gift. If it's above 0, then the first message is displayed.
This seems like a natural use for scripting, but, in my searches so far, I've found no references to using conditional text and data merges together in scripting. So, would this be a relatively simple task to accomplish?
Thanks for any help you can give!

the data merge feature with indesign only brings in text which was in the original data file itself - it doesn't know how to parse or interpret it to behave differently upon seeing certain results. that is, it doesn't run database queries such as if-else statements - it will only import text which was originally in the data file.
however, there are plug-ins to indesign that CAN do this but they cost BOATLOADS. are you printing this yourself or are you sending this to a commercial printer? if the latter, have you discussed your print solution with the printer, as they may have a plug-in that can do this type of data merging, and all you would have to do is provide the printer with a packaged native file, along with the data and instructions as to what has to change... and for goodness sake see a proof of it!!!

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Tip for Data Merge with Multiple Records (labels, etc.)

I have seen many InDesign Data Merge questions about how to create sheets of mailing labels, especially the problem of getting only one label per page, when you need 30 or more.
Adobe's instructions are poor and incomplete in that InDesign doesn't step out the records from a data source - it steps out the FRAMES that contain the data field placeholders.
That is why you only need to place a text or image frame once on a single page - during the datamerge, InDesign will create the additional FRAMES for each record, and it will create the pages required to hold them.
You do have to set the desired spacing on the
If you create the frame on a Master page, ID allows you to update the data source (when it changes) in the Data Merge tool panel.
These are very nice and robust features, but the documentation for them is confusing to many people.
You will find more great in-depth help for Data Merge, with screen captures and attachments, here in the forum.

For a multiple record merge you need one set of placeholders, then set the margins and spacing in the merge options so the positioning is correct.
Warning: Using Preview in a multiple record merge will corrupt the file. If you press the preview button, Undo after looking at the preview, then merge without using preview.

Is there a way to name the .indd files created by a data merge with values in the CSV file

I have a data merge document that is set to single Record per Document page and 1 page per document. In my CSV file I have a field for Part Number. If I run a data merge with 10 records I end up with 10 .indd files. I need a way so that the resulting .indd files are named the same value that is in the Part Number field.

Loic has provided a link for my original piece, and I've written up some follow-up pieces for indesignsecrets.com:
http://indesignsecrets.com/data-merging-individual-records-separate-pdfs.php
http://indesignsecrets.com/data-merging-individual-records-separate-pdfs-part-2-scripting. php
So there are several ways to get unique name PDFs from an indesign Data Merge. However, none of these 3 articles will truly answer your question of how to get unique indesign filenames using the database. I can see a practical purpose for this as merging business cards directly to PDFs is great, but I can be guaranteed that while on proof, there will be alts to the business cards that need to be done outside the merge, meaning specific records need to be exported to indesign files for further manipulation.

Creating Online Documentation With Conditional Text

I'm fairly new to conditional text and was curious if it was possible to create a document that can be hosted online with conditional text. The document versions need to contain links specific to each company referencing the document. For example, if Microsoft wanted to access their version, the documentation would provide links to their own documentation that relates to the subject being discussed. However, if Adobe wanted to access the same document, it would give them their own links as opposed to Microsoft's links. If it is possible, what method does Frame use to distinguish between the user accessing the documentation? Would users be authenticated through User ID and Password?
Thank you in advance,
John

Hi Van,
Thank you for your response. I was thinking that the way conditional text worked is that it basically created three different versions (files) housed as one file and the versions could be somehow referenced individually from within the main file. Obviously this is not the case, but it still would have made the process of hosting the documentation online fairly easy. I'll look into Air and see if it can kind of work like what I was looking for, but if all else fails, we could always just host each of the seperate versions.
John

Data merge with images! cannot get it to work

I have set up my spread sheet like i usually do for a data merge with an extra column for the images with i called '@images-
my images i named the following way
Macintosh HD:Users:myname:Desktop:test:imagesqrcode_AberdeenENG.png it didnt work
i tried
Users:myname:Desktop:test:imagesqrcode_AberdeenENG.png it didnt work
i tried with slashes
i placed the images in the same file as my in design file and just named it qrcode_AberdeenENG.png that still didnt work
doesn anyone out there have a solution

Try placing the images in the same folder as the source file (the .txt file).
Then you should just be able to use the exact name of the image (no path required).
I wrote this up in a blog post many years ago (but it hasn't changed):
http://indesignsecrets.com/data-merging-part-2.php
I went back to my source files for this example, and it still works in InDesign CS6.

How to build a document with conditional text

So, I created a condition for a feature that is new to my document and until it's stable, I want to hide that text. No problem. I selected the condition and from the Show/Hide Conditional Text pod, I moved it over to hide. When I created the conditional text, I gave it a background color of gray so I could easily distinguish the conditional text from the non-conditional text. However, if I leave the conditional text visible and go to generate a PDF, the gray background style appears on the conditional text in the PDF. Is there something I'm missing here when it comes to building a PDF? I don't want the style I see in the FM file to appear in the final PDF. I only want that background color as an indicator while I'm editing it. I don't want to have to remember to change the style every time I want to build with the condition visible. Here's a screenshot from the PDF. The bits in gray are what I had applied the condition to.
After selecting the book file, I tried both doing a Save as PDF and a Print Book but both options ended up with my conditional text having the gray background style in the final output.

No, you have misunderstood the problem. Yes, If I want to hide the condition so it doesn't print, that works great. But, once the feature is active (or say I have two customers, one that has the feature and one that doesn't), If I want to print the document with the conditional text visible, then I want the text but I don't want the background style that shows up in FM. The conditional style should only appear in FM, not the generated PDF.
I worked for years with Madcap's Flare and you could set the color of the conditional text in order to distinguish what text was conditioned and with what condition (different colors for different conditions). However, when you generated the output, those colors never showed up. The only thing that displayed was the text that was set to be visible. That's what I was expecting from FM. And the FM tutorials I have taken, that's what they stated should happen. Here's a transcript from the FrameMaker 10 tutorial on Lynda.com:
When we go down to the Conditional Text pod, you'll notice that we have a number of radio buttons for In, Not In, As Is, and then we also have our tags down below. So this is going to be in the US version. So we'll click the US tag. We'll change the radio button to In. You'll see the status change over here to In, and then we'll apply that by clicking the first button in our group of buttons here to apply it. Now, you'll see something change here in the document and if we deselect our text, you can see it's now blue with the overline and that's how we decided the style and color would appear for our US tags. That's not how it's going to print. It's just for our own visual purposes.

Is there a tutorial/primer for working with conditional text and page numbering in book folders?

I'm ramping up on FrameMaker 9 and have been experimenting with using folders in book files. I like being able to add Frame files to the folder to organize content. But I also need to use conditional tags. In one version of my book, the entire contents of some files in one folder are hidden using conditional text. I can't figure out how to set the numbering for each file so that the page numbers adjust appropriately in this scenario. Or is it even possible to do this?
Can anyone recommend an advanced tutorial for using folders in Frame 9?

Michelle,
It would be easier to maintain if you create a different book file that omits the entire "conditionalized" set of files.
See these Adobe TechComm blogs for some more background info on using hierarchical books and numbering behaviour:
http://blogs.adobe.com/techcomm/2009/05/xml_authoring_projects_using_hierarchical_books.ht ml
http://blogs.adobe.com/techcomm/2009/06/numbering_in_hierarchical_books.html

Conversion with Conditional Text in Table

I'm taking the first steps in converting Unstructured Frame to Structure. One document is pretty clean except for one issue: my structure breaks around conditional text in tables. (The tables have a f3ew issues oftheir own, but the conditional text seems to compound the problem) I'm not sure how this should be dealt with. The structure tags are shown in the view below.
And here is the Structure View:
Is this something that can be set up with a qualifier, and if so, How? Also, in the conversion map table, Is there any order dependency, as well, concerning where the Conditional Text element appears?

Jane,
As far as I am concerned I do not see anything unexpected. You get dotted lines in the Structure View apparently because the element <B1_Body1> seems not to be allowed in the Element <CELL>. It looks like you worked with the defaults of the Conversion Table. Have you created your own EDD and imported the Element Definitions? Is <B1_Body1> a legal element inside <CELL>?
From my experience the Conditional Text feature works very much in parallel to the element structure. It comes from the format-based world and the structure has no means to handle text conditions. If you want to work with text conditions in the future, you would use »attribute-based condition management« as made possible through the plug-in AXCM or FrameMaker’s built-in feature »Filter by attribute«. There is no built-in method to change text conditions into certain attribute values – but it is possible to automate this move via the FDK or FrameScript or ExtendScript (from FM10).
- Michael

Quick contract gig: Data Merge with inDesign

My client has a small college directory created with inDesign, and a spreadsheet of contact info / headshots. They would like to perform a data merge so they can ready the directory for print.
Please contact me if this is within your wheelhouse!
Paul

You can make three separate ID files and then combine them into a book. The book file is merely a super set of the individual ID files.

Data Merge with Lookup

i need to create a date merge document that includes a lookup field.
What we need is for one field to be a dropdown with list of all the options, when one of the options is selected the rest of the fields in the document is populated with the relevant information

That is not what data merge does. Think about it more along the lines of a mail merge.
I think you’re going to need to do this in Acrobat at a minimum and perhaps even LiveCycle.
I’d pop over to the Acrobat forum and see if anyone there has any scripts to help automate this.
Bob

Can i use data merge with pdf images in indesign?

Hi need to do a data merge but with pdf's not jpg or tifs. I am having the result with jpgs but not with pdf's.
Can i do it with pdf's?

in fact that is not a problem because i have both pdfs same size and orientated, the only thing is that i cannot use the pdf docs for some reason.
eg. in the csv file i have (this is not working)
Field 1                                      Field2
'@background                          '@page
Machintosh HD:bg1.pdf           Machintosh HD:page1.pdf
eg. in the csv file i have (this works)
Field 1                                      Field2
'@background                          '@page
Machintosh HD:bg1.psd           Machintosh HD:page1.psd
I would like to use the pdf file is there a different way to do so?

Data merge with football tickets. Printing causes out of memory errors. Can only print 10 at a time!

Here's the deal. Printing football tickets for the local high school. 10 tickets per 8.5 x 11 sheet. All black and white. I couldn't data merge into one whole document of tickets because it was failing to do that. So, I end up with 3 documents. First two have 50 pages of tickets and the last has 37 pages.
When I go to print, I can only print 10 pages at a time or InDesign straight up crashes or I get an "Out of Memory" error which is bull because I've got plenty of ram available (unless it's complaining about lack of HD space for some reason)
Incredibly frustrating.
Each ticket has 3 images on it. Two of the images are the same. Those two images are about 103kb .ai files. Very very simple. The other image is a TIFF that is about 76kb. So there are 1000 .ai files / document and 500 TIFFs.
Here's a video I took of it ripping: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCjvdmXuaYs&feature=c4-overview&list=UUf_1UFp80YLZJfCyIxXEg kg
Also, when printing, I have the Send Data set to Optimized Subsampling instead of "All". That's not seeming to help.
Any thoughts?
IDCS 5.5
OSX 10.8.4

I just ran a sample on my laptop.
AI file, duplicated, is 284k. Image is roughly 200k. The CSV has 2054 records, and the merged document with 10 per page is 250 megabytes. PDF is just under 50 megs.
This laptop has only 4 gigs memory but has a lot of free disk space. It took a good amount of time to do the merge, a bit longer to create the PDF-X1a PDF.
Mike

Data Merge with images - how to link/embed?

My data merge is working beautifully but I cannot figure out how to properly include images in the data source so they appear in the target document. I'd love a tutorial on this. Anyone?

You can get detailed info about data merge or any content on indesign help itself
Add image fields in the data source file
By adding image fields to the data source file, you can allow a different image to appear on each merged record. For example, when you merge documents that include information from various companies, you may want to include an image of each company’s logo as part of the merge.
Open the data source file.
At the beginning of the data field name, type an “at” symbol (@) to insert text or paths that refer to image files.
The @ symbol is required only in the first line; subsequent lines should include the image paths. Paths, which are case-sensitive, must follow the naming conventions of the operating system in which they’re stored.
(Windows) Example of image references in data source file
Name                    Age                                       Photos
Bill Tucker            36                                          C:\Photos\BillTucker.jpg
Dat Nguyen         53                                          C:\MyDocuments\dat.gif

Data Merge with InDesign doc that's 4up

I've just experimented with an InDesign document that we want to print 4 up (postcard) and we'd like our addresses to merge and print in the mailing area. When I've tried it, however, it's putting the same address on each of the four cards. Any way around this? The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is to split my excel address list into four equal groups, name them each a different name (addresses 1, addresses 2, etc) and then add the merge information for each doc on each on of the cards.
Doable? or no?
Susan

Unfortunately, the designer before me (I work at a print shop) lost the manual. I've searched the web. I've followed the instructions in InDesign help and also Excel help. I've tried numerous times to do this, changing different parameters hoping that it will succeed. As for putting only one placeholder on the page, it's not cost effective in printing to print a postcard one up on a digital printer. Tons of wasted space. FYI... data merge may be new to me, but no need to be flip about your response. I've been a designer for over 27 years, certainly no newbie.

Can I data-merge with different masters?

I have a project that has three different page layouts and the choice of layout is data dependent.
Conceptually what I want is for the 10th field in my data record to tell InDesign which master page to use before merging the data from that record.
Can such a thing be done with the standard data-merge facility? Is there an affordable (<$100) third-party solution? Could this be done with a script?

Conceptually what I want is for the 10th field in my data record to tell InDesign which master page to use before merging the data from that record.
Triggering a master using data merge... no, at least not from InDesign only. VDP software such as XMPie (i pick this because I have used the trial version) can do this, BUT it doesn't fulfil the next requirement of being <$100, and I don't think you will find ANY VDP solution for that.
Instead, I would suggest an alternative. Rather than triggering a master page, I would suggest making a frame in the background of the page that uses a data-merge image field, so if you are changing letterheads mid-stream based on the data in the job, this will work. The catch is, there's no way indesign's data merge will trigger this by itself based on the data in the file. Instead, the data would have to include an additional field that reflects the relevant page background, and if using an excel spreadsheet to make the data, would require some creative if/else statements.
So it is possible. It slows down the processing of the file tremendously, and I'm not sure how many records are being merged.
So far as is it scriptable? Yes, most things are scriptable in InDesign. Is someone going to volunteer to prepare such a custom-script for nothing... unlikely.

Data merge with conditional text

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