12 Replies Latest reply: Jun 27, 2009 9:41 AM by Talyianna RSS

    Merging information within InDesign

    Talyianna Community Member

      Hi all,

      I really need some direction here.

      We have ONE document that is going to need to be changed 1261 times in two places. One will be a little text block where a few digits will be changing and another will be a small graphic (barcode) that will be changing.

       

      The information will be coming from 2 sources... the text will be coming from a spreadsheet, and the barcode will be coming from either a folder of images, or will be some text as well from another source.

       

      What would you recommend as being the best way to go about this? I have never done data merging prior to this within InDesign...

       

      Thank you very much in advance for your assistance:)

       

      Christine

        • 1. Re: Merging information within InDesign
          Michael Witherell CommunityMVP

          Open a panel from Window > Automation > Data Merge. Take time in reading the several pages of helpfile about it. It is somewhat detailed!

           

          Mike Witherell in Maryland

          • 2. Re: Merging information within InDesign
            P Spier CommunityMVP

            In addition to what Mike said, you really want to get both pieces of information into a single data file. One field can be the variable text and the other can be the path to the graphic. You can't as far as I know, run two merges on the same document without a plugin of some sort ( and for all I know not then, either).

             

            As far as setting up the actual document to merge into, I'm going to assume that the variable text does not need to be inline with other text, but will be in it's own special location so it can have a variable length that won't affect the other text in the document, and the same is true for the barcode graphic. You'll want to set up the entire page normally, first, with placeholders for the merge fields (you can move the field labels into them on the page). Now select everything EXCEPT the placeholders, cut, and paste in place on a master page. All of your static information should now be in the correct position, but on a master page so when that master is applied you see it, but when the [None] or other master master is applied all you see are your placeholders.

             

            Before you run the merge, assign the [None] master to the page so only the placeholders are there. This will save a lot of time that ID would waste recreating all the static elements. After the merge, select all the pages and apply the master with the rest of the document.

             

            Peter

            • 3. Re: Merging information within InDesign
              Talyianna Community Member

              Thank you both very much for your help!

               

              Do you think we can run the operation "twice" if the info is in 2 separate date files... first run it for the text at the top, then modify the ID template and then run it again for the barcode?

               

              Thank you,

              Christine

              • 4. Re: Merging information within InDesign
                P Spier CommunityMVP

                As I said, I don't think so. The merg takes a single "template" page and makes as many copies of that page as required to complete the merge. If you ran twice, you'd wind up with two different documents, one with the text and one with the barcode. One of the catlog plugins might be able to do this, but I have no experience with those.

                • 5. Re: Merging information within InDesign
                  Tim McLaren Community Member

                  Would you be able to explain why you need to do it in two passes and why you need to modify the master after the first pass. There might be some other sort of trick you could use to get the same outcome.

                  • 6. Re: Merging information within InDesign
                    Mr. Met Community Member

                    A dedicated data merge app might be a good investment if you want to draw data in from multiple sources. See em software and woodwing or google data merge software for InDesign.

                    • 7. Re: Merging information within InDesign
                      Eugene Tyson CommunityMVP

                      Here is a video on the feature http://www.theindesigner.com/blog/episode-43-data-merge-video

                       

                      Basically what you do is set up an excel file, one column with the numbers, the other column with the path to the images were the barcodes are stored.

                       

                      You need a header in each cell like

                       

                      Numbers
                      @photos
                      1000c:\mydocuments\barcode1.eps
                      1001c:\mydocuments\barcode2.eps

                       

                      Once you have your file completed in excel save it as a tab delimited text file.

                       

                      Once you have this done, run data merge, follow the instructions, inserting the fields when prompted.

                       

                      More on it here

                      http://livedocs.adobe.com/en_US/InDesign/5.0/help.html?content=WSa285fff53dea4f86173837510 01ea8cb3f-6c3c.html

                      • 8. Re: Merging information within InDesign
                        Talyianna Community Member

                        Thank you so much for the very helpful information!! I am going to take a look at it now and let you know how it works:) I REALLY appreciate it!!

                         

                        Christine

                         

                        UPDATE: I just had a look at the video...that is WONDERFUL....thank you!!! That looks like exactly what we need:))

                        • 9. Re: Merging information within InDesign
                          P Spier CommunityMVP

                          Tim McLaren wrote:

                           

                          Would you be able to explain why you need to do it in two passes and why you need to modify the master after the first pass. There might be some other sort of trick you could use to get the same outcome.

                          I'm not sure who yare askinig, but it's the OP who wants to use two passes, which can't be done out of the box, I think because she doean't want to combine the data into a single file.

                           

                          The whole master thing is not strictly necessary, but it speeds up the process more than you might imagine if there is a fair amount of static information.

                          • 10. Re: Merging information within InDesign
                            Tim McLaren Community Member

                            Sorry did I reply directly to your comment? My comments were meant to be directed toward the owner of the thread. I must not be using this new forum setup correctly.

                            • 11. Re: Merging information within InDesign
                              P Spier CommunityMVP

                              No, you replied to the OP, but I'm the one who mentioned the whole master page thing, so it seemed like part of the question was directed at me.

                               

                              These threads can get very confusing if you don't quote the relevant prior post.

                              • 12. Re: Merging information within InDesign
                                Talyianna Community Member

                                Tim,

                                The reason I had wanted to do it in two passes was because I had information coming from two different sources (I did not yet know exactly how the "merge process" worked either so did not know it would end up creating additional copies of the document).

                                 

                                After reading everyone's posts and watching the excellent video suggested by Eugene, I now know exactly what to do and am going to try to combine all my data within one file ... an Excel spreadsheet. I can create links to the graphics from within the Excel spreadsheet that will then be "picked up" by ID when I do the merge.

                                 

                                This was really an excellent thread and everyone was very helpful indeed! Thank you all...very very much appreciated!

                                 

                                Christine