Comments on: Data Merging – Part 3

By: Janice Hadfield

Janice Hadfield — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 14:08:31 +0000

Thanks so much for the tutorial. I’m desperately seeking a solution. My colleague and I create personalized flyers for our 450+ sales partners. We merge these to separate documents (record limit = 1) and then export each jpg or pdf file individually. I have found some plug-ins that export files automatically for you to separate documents, but the naming convention is our problem. We need to name them by the person’s name for ease in emailing them out. For example, we would need it to be johndoe_flyer.jpg and janedoe_flyer.jpg. Does anyone know a solution to merge a document to separate files and then export them to a jpg or pdf with the same csv or text file?
Thanks, Janice

By: Leah

Leah — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 02:20:33 +0000

Re: resizing text frames automatically

I have merged into a simple table before (just three cells across) and you can set the height to at least 1.08mm or whatever your minimum is. It will get bigger to fit more data but smaller if the data doesn’t take up as many lines. This must be set before you merge…found that out the hard way when i had to change individual boxes

Leah

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Fri, 21 May 2010 12:58:46 +0000

@Georges: Yes, sure! If you have a good tip, please share it here.

By: Georges Donat

Georges Donat — Fri, 21 May 2010 06:47:32 +0000

Yes, there is an easy way to do it !
Still interested ?
#
>Branislav Milic
>March 19th, 2007 • 8:56 am • Link
>Anne-Marie,
>Regarding your third comment, this also means that
>creating recto-verso badges is impossible with the
>Data Merge feature ! We noticed that last year during
> a training.

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 18:42:54 +0000

Sounds like the export file isn’t so good… Also check out this post: http://indesignsecrets.com/zap-gremlins-in-problem-data-merge-files.php

By: Gretchen Schulz

Gretchen Schulz — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 18:33:34 +0000

Hi, I am trying to data merge a file that originated in excel, saved to .txt and then brought into indesign (3x).

Yesterday with a similar file created in an older version of excel (03) I was able to data merge to indesign.

Today I have a file created in excel 2007 and when I try to merge it I get the message (the prefix ” has not been mapped to any URI)

Can someone help me with this.

Thanks Gretchen

By: David Blatner

David Blatner — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:24:43 +0000

No, I don’t think there is any way to automatically resize a text frame in Data Merge. Sounds like you may need a more powerful solution (such as em software’s indata, or datalinker or some other plug-in)

By: Andy Green

Andy Green — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 11:03:59 +0000

Hi, did anyone answer kathleen’s query about resizing text frames automatically in a data merge?

I too would like to do this if anyone knows how?

Currently I either make a small text frame and risk overset text or make a large one and risk massive amounts of white space between rows.

Thanks v much

Andy

By: Pauline Johnson

Pauline Johnson — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 05:11:48 +0000

I am struggling with Data Merge and hope maybe the answer lies here … I created my docs just fine, the preview works great, but when I create the data merge document, a couple of fields *randdomly* do not populate with the data, they show the field name. Same field, one record is fine, the other is not. My data is coming from an Excel spreadsheet saved as a tab delimited file; I can’t find anything wrong with my data file. I am so perplexed! Any thoughts on what might be causing this?

By: John Durel

John Durel — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 22:25:38 +0000

I have a problem printing variable data from indesign cs4.
We have been using PrintShop Mail for the last few years, works fine but indesign allows for some additional creative output.
Our problem is when printing postcards for bulk mailing, we want to print them in order “front to back.”
By way of explaining, we run 4 up, say 800 cards. In order to keep them in postal order I want to print record 1 (top left), record 2 behind that, record 3 behind that, and so on.
The cards print sequentially front to back in a “Z” printing direction.
I can’t find the solution, if it is possible.
Thanks for any help out there.
John