CS5 Data Merge – Empty Field Character?

stewb

This topic has 3 replies, 3 voices, and was last updated 13 years, 3 months ago by Gavin Anderson.

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- August 25, 2010 at 1:41 pm #56821
  
  stewb
  Member
  
  I'm laying out a catalog using a data merge. Basically, I have headings in my csv file for Size1, Size2, Size3, etc. In the InDesign layout I want the sizes separated by a slash “XS/S/M/L/XL”. When I merge the data (skipping empty fields,) it works fine for products that come in 5 sizes, but it generates “S/M/L//” for products with only 3. I'd love to find/replace for the trailing slashes to get rid of them, but InDesign generates a character to indicate that it skipped a field, and I can't figure out what it is. It looks like a colon when I show hidden characters, and I can't paste it into the Find/Change dialog box. Any ideas? If it has a unicode value I could do a GREP search.
- August 25, 2010 at 3:10 pm #56822
  
  Theunis De Jong
  Member
  
  If you select just that character you can see its Unicode in the Info Panel.
  
  I'm betting it's an U+FEFF, a reserved value according to Unicode, and so it was safe for Adobe's engineers to put it to other uses (since it's not allowed as a character code). The U+FEFF code is visible on screen, but since it's usually a very specialized marker for more data, you are usually not allowed to copy it.
  
  If it is U+FEFF, you are not yet done :) Strangely, GREP does not allow you to search for it the usual way, using
  
  x{ffef}
  
  — which ought to have worked! It's rather strange because you can find it just fine with regular Find Text, using the notation
  
  <feff>
  
  A curiosity: this same code is used for XML tags and for Index Markers. You cannot replace XML tags (they simply won't budge), but removing Index Markers works fine.
  
  (Another curiosity, proving the “special status” of this code: the special codes ^I (Text) and ~I (GREP) will find Index Markers but skip other occurrences of U+FEFF.)
- August 26, 2010 at 5:17 am #56825
  
  stewb
  Member
  
  FEFF is the culprit, all right. I never would have thought to use regular Find Text to search for it, but it works like a charm. Thanks!
- January 25, 2011 at 1:21 pm #58504
  
  Gavin Anderson
  Participant
  
  Jong hits the nail on the head again. Even though we may not agree on some nuances of typesetting, I am constantly amazed at his wealth of knowledge. Kudos to Jongware.
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