Is scripting best for my use case, or is there something else?

Nigel Hall

This topic has 6 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 4 years, 5 months ago by Tobias Wantzen.

Viewing 6 reply threads

Author

Posts
- September 26, 2019 at 2:28 pm #1188002
  
  Nigel Hall
  Participant
  
  Hi,
  
  First forum post!
  
  I’ve created several InDesign documents for a client and now they want me to create a lot more of the same documents with consistent changes in each doc (just. name etc.). It seems perfect for a bit of scripting, but I’m wondering if this is the best approach with InDesign. I have a spreadsheet with the info that’s unique to each doc. I need to do an InDesign version of a “mail merge” to create new docs with new names.
  
  Any pointers gratefully appreciated.
  
  Nigel
- September 26, 2019 at 5:39 pm #14324045
  
  Tobias Wantzen
  Participant
  
  Hi Nigel, I think you should look for »Data Merge«:
  
  Automating Data Handling
  
  Data Merging – Part 2
  
  (https://indesignsecrets.com/?s=data+merge)
  
  Or any free resource you can find via web search. There are many free how-to videos available on the different video platforms either.
  
  Best regards, Tobias
- September 26, 2019 at 6:31 pm #14324043
  
  Nigel Hall
  Participant
  
  Thanks Tobias. I just read through the Data Merge blog posts and ran a test. Data Merge only seems to create one document at a time. I want to take a single template and create a new document for each row in my source data file. Can you suggest any other solutions?
- September 26, 2019 at 8:22 pm #14324040
  
  Nigel Hall
  Participant
  
  OK I did some poking around and I guess VDP is what I’m looking for. Man, those plugins are expensive! Are there any VDP alternatives that a poorly paid consultant can afford?
- September 26, 2019 at 9:17 pm #14324038
  
  David Blatner
  Keymaster
  
  It might be easier to use something like Data Merge and then use some other tool to break the INDD file into smaller pieces. Or even easier, use Data Merge to make a PDF and then use Acrobat to split a big PDF into smaller pdfs.
  
  e.g.:
  
  Data Merging Individual Records to Separate PDFs
  
  Or, I haven’t tried this in a long time but…
  
  Free Script Splits Long InDesign Files into Smaller Ones
- September 28, 2019 at 11:58 pm #14324020
  
  Nigel Hall
  Participant
  
  Thanks, David. I’ve been working through those posts and they’re a big help.
- November 8, 2019 at 10:19 am #14323768
  
  Pat Morita
  Member
  
  There are quite a couple of plugin solution alternatives. We prefer Mydatamerge (Mac only). Easy interface, 30 days trial- might be enough to accomplish your task. https://mydatamerge.com
Author

Posts