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.

Similar Messages

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.

Data Merge with Indesign

I am trying to create a large catalog. I have 3 very different product types that require different info, and therefore I think, completely different templates. I was thinking that I will need to create three separate data merge templates/ merges, but then I would like to combine them all into one indesign book. Is there an easy way to do this without copying and pasting all of the products from each into one main book?
Thanks!

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.

How do I generate a data merge in InDesign from an excel spreadsheet which includes a barcode

Can you please advise if the following process is possible within InDesign CS 5.5? (Mac OS 10.8.2).
We need to create a data merge that includes a barcode. The data merge is for several thousand records.
We have a customer-supplied Excel spreadsheet that contains seven fields, one of which is a number that ultimately needs to print as a barcode when we make the data merge in InDesign.
As you would expect, the conventional six fields data merge perfectly - but we can't find a way to make the barcode print correctly within the data merge.
We have investigated several possible solutions without success.
Some solutions suggest a plug-in for Excel to convert the number into a barcode whilst still in the spreadsheet - but this doesn't come across correctly when we import the CSV file into the InDesign data merge.
We have investigated certain third party software applications but none provide the full solution we require. Some, for example, appear to create the barcode within the Excel spreadsheet but don't produce the barcode correctly when we data merge in InDesign; and some will allow us to create a one-off barcode within InDesign but have no automated way of retrieving the thousands of Excel numbers and turning them into barcodes.
We have also come across possible 'font' solutions but have had no success with these either.
For a previous job we needed to produce we outsourced to a specialist mailing company, who assured us they produced the whole job (very quickly) within InDesign. They, understandably, won't tell us how they did it. But, given the speed with which they produced the job for us, we imagine - with the correct software - the whole process is easy to do.
Can you please advise?

HI MIKE
Thanks again for your reply and your help with this.
I've downloaded the barcode font from the link you supplied.
I've tried three tests - and seem much closer to getting what we need. But I've come up against a couple of issues.
TEST 1 - almost just to see if the downloaded font worked, I simply data merged our source csv file and applied the downloaded barcode font to the serial number in ID. Probably unsurprisingly, this produced a perfectly printed barcode - that wouldn't scan.
TEST 2 - I manually added asterisks before and after the serial number in the first couple of fields and then tried the same process as TEST 1. It produced a perfectly printed barcode which this time DID scan correctly - but obviously the barcode had asterisks on it which I don't want. I just want the serial number. And with thousands of serial numbers we need the addition of the asterisks to happen automatically (which is where your text editor process seems the perfect solution, if we could get that to work).
TEST 3 - Noting your comments about using parenthesis around the serial number, I followed your example of (123456). But Excel won't let me type a parenthesis. It lets me type the parenthesis but then instantly substitutes it with a - (hyphen) before the number in the actual serial number cell and no character at all after the number.
If you have any suggestions or solutions for any of the above they'd be gratefully received! Thanks again for all your help with this.
Kind regards
Rob

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.

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.

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.

Data Merging in InDesign 5.5

Hello,
I would like to use data merge in InDesign but unfortunately it seems to be missing some essential functions. One function I would like to be able use is creating single PDFs naming them using a column that is in the CSV file.
Does anyone know of a plug-in (free or not) that extends the ability of data merge in InDesign? We are on Windows 7.
Thanks,
Graham

Not offhand, but it's a pretty straightforward script.
Merge the filenames into a field on the pasteboard and then have a script that iterates over the pages of your document, reads the filename out of the textframe on the pasteboard, and exports the page to the filename.
It's like 4 lines of code...Search around and ask in the scripting forum if you can't find one or manage it yourself. I'm 25% sure I've written one of these for someone...

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 photos, for a photobook, and also a DVD(?)

I'm using CS4 on a Mac - am considering upgrading to 5.5.
I've used Data Mege to create documents for in-house printing with good success. It seems nearly fool-proof. I viewed a David Blattner video on Lynda.com that shows how easy it is to incorporate photos into Data Mege as well.
Have any of you used InDesign to create a photobook, and if so, can you reccomend a company that can work with InDesign files rather than requiring you to learn their proprietary layout software? I want to preserve and share several old family photo options. I'm scanning the photos and typing their captions into a spreadsheet.
Is there some way this could also be turned into a DVD using the same set-up so that I can make the individual photo files and their captions available to other family members?

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.

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

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!!!

Data Merge with books

I am working on making a book with InDesign and have prepared with data merge a sequence of images to appear on each right page. If I create a merged document, it works fine as long as the target is a single document. I have many documents I wish to apply the sequence to, in a book. If I try to make a merged document with the book, it only merges a single document. How can I apply data merge to the entire book? This is urgent.

I think you should back up and describe what you're trying to do with more detail. What Data Merge does is it creates a new InDesign document. If your document is already done and you want some way to add an image in the whitespace of your right margin on each page, then Data Merge (at least by itself) is not the tool you want to use. Have you tried it yet? Try a really simple data merge. Make a CSV with a few values, then
1) Start a blank InDesign doc
2) Select your data source from the Data Merge panel
3) Insert your placeholders
4) Create Merged Document
5) ... and watch as Data Merge makes a brand new document with your merged data. You can't use Data Merge if the chapter INDDs in your Book file are already complete.
So, if you already have a Book file and a bunch of completed chapters, then Data Merge won't work for you, without some additional steps. Maybe we can suggest a workaround? That will be hard right now, but if you tell us more about how you are using your Book file, and how many chapters you have, and et cetera, then perhaps we can come up with something better than:
1) Start a blank InDesign doc
2) Select your data source from the Data Merge panel
3) Insert your placeholders
4) Export to PDF
5) Open your first chapter file
6) Make a new layer for your image (optional)
7) Use the MultiPageImporter script to import just the pages you need for your first chapter from the PDF you made in no. 4 above
8) Save your chapter
9) Open your next chapter file
10) Go to no. 6 above, and repeat the cycle until all of your chapters have your right-hand-images
So, yeah, that would be a lot of work for a large book. But it would be less work than placing your images manually, right? We might be able to suggest something that takes even less work if we knew what you were doing.

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

Quick contract gig: Data Merge with inDesign

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