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Karl B Cartwright
Karl B Cartwright
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Placing Word File with Character Styles

Nov 22, 2011 11:50 AM

InDesign CS5, windows 7

I am hoping for some guidance.

 

I am creating a directory from an Excel file.  This is what I have done and where I am at.

 

1. Edited Excel File to ad "Headers" for Name, Address, etc...

2. Used Mail Merge in MS word to create a Directory.

     - Created Character Styles in word for different fields.

     - Did some minor editing to remove stray spaces, etc...

3. Placed wrod file in InDesign.  Layout is created with basic text boxes that are split into 4 columns, each box linked to the next (I have about 30 pages of this).

 

At first, this was working OK, but the CHaracter styles were not coming through (Actually, they were lost during the merge in Word).  So, I did some work and found that there was a code I could add to the Merge Fields oin Word to force the Character styles to be retained.

 

Anyway, I did that.  However, now when I place the Word File in InDesign, it appears to hang at "Processing Character Styles".

 

I removed the code from the merge, figuring I could go back, but I still get that hang.

 

Any suggestions are appreciated...

 

-kaz

464 Views   3 Replies   Latest reply: Peter Spier, Nov 22, 2011 4:21 PM
 
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  • Joel Cherney
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    1. Joel Cherney,
    Nov 22, 2011 1:46 PM   in reply to Karl B Cartwright
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    Any suggestions are appreciated...

     

     

    I think I followed most of your explanation. But, since we can't see what you're doing, it's hard to know 100% what your reasons are for doing what you do. F'rinstance, I wonder why you're bothering with the Word merge at all. Without knowing why you have to run the merge in Word, I'd suggest this:

     

    add headers to your Excel file

    save out .csv

    Use InDesign's Data Merge tool, skip Word entirely

     

    Why do you need to use Word's Mail Merge? If you've never used Data Merge in ID, you should probably take a look at the Help file entry to see if it will work for you.

     
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  • Karl B Cartwright
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    2. Karl B Cartwright,
    Nov 22, 2011 1:51 PM   in reply to Joel Cherney
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    As far as I can tell, ID wont do a Directory Style Merge, unless I use a separate text object for each entry, and that is not practical.  So, following advice from this forum, I used Word...

     

    Perhaps I misunderstood.  I will look at ID Merge again.

     
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  • Peter Spier
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    3. Peter Spier,
    Nov 22, 2011 4:21 PM   in reply to Karl B Cartwright
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    Depends on what you mean by a directory style merge. I use ID's Data Merge to do an annual directory for a local organization, and I think many other users do similar work. Yes, each record becomes a separate text frame, so editing is not necessarily as easy as it might be in Word (never done a mail merge in Word), but there are scripts that will thread the individual frames intoa single story if you need that.

     
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