5 Replies Latest reply: Aug 16, 2009 3:27 PM by P Spier RSS

    Merging multiple records onto one page

    bookreviewer Community Member

      I have two questions for successfully setting up a mail merge:

       

      1.  I have a .csv file that contains multiple records.  All but one column contains one line of text.  I have one column in the record that contains several paragraphs of text.

       

      Problem:  The merge sees the paragraph returns (or line breaks) as an indicator to go to the next record.  What's the work-around for this?

       

      2.  I need the records to flow one after another.

       

      Problem:  It's merging one record per page.

       

      Background that may help (maybe merge is not the feature I should be using):

       

      I'm designing a newspaper that contains about 150 book reviews.  The reviews stem from a database that I'm exporting as a csv.  Rather than converting/formatting the reviews from the database by hand (like I have been doing), I thought InDesign must have some automated way of handling this.

       

      This is an example of what one record looks like:

       

      Italian For Beginners

      By Kristen Hammel

      Random House, $12.95, 53 pages

       

      Don’t be fooled by the //Italian for Beginners// cover photo of an Audrey Hepburn look-alike on the back on an Italian motorcycle with her arms around a handsome man. This novel is stronger and meatier than another  “American falls in love in Italy” love story.  Yes, the protagonist Cat Connelly escapes to Italy to find herself after tiring of being the center of everyone’s dismay as an unmarried 34-year-old overly-responsible sister, daughter, and granddaughter.

       

      And yes, there is romance, but it comes with a twist.  The best part of the novel is watching Cat shed her carefully constructed identity and past.  Harmel’s character discovers an authentic Rome from a family, insider’s perspective. The Italizan zest for life and her own connection to Italy allows her to throw off her accountant-style persona and take risks.  As Cat examines her deep-seated fears and biases,  she also discovers those things that give her true peace, joy and satisfaction.

       

      Will Cat fall in love with a handsome Italian? Or will she fall in love with her own long-suppressed Italian heritage and natural gifts? Read the novel to find out, and you’ll also find a bonus at the end of the novel: five authentic  recipes inspired by Italian for Beginners.  Mangi, mangi, buon appetito!

       

      Reviewed by John Smith

       

       

       

      Can anyone help?

        • 1. Re: Merging multiple records onto one page
          P Spier CommunityMVP

          First the easy part. To get multiple records per page, create only one placeholder in the upper left position. ID duplicates EVERYTHING on the page as many times as it can using your spacing selections. If you have one element at the top of the page and another at the bottom, for example, ID will not be able to put additional records on that page because there is no space.

           

          Text frames should be no larger than necessary to hold the data. They won't grow or shrink to fit during the merge, so you'll have gaps if the length of the text varies from record to record.

           

          Now, for how to fix the line-break problem. In the data file substitute a character, or group of characters you won't be using anywhre else for each return. After the merge use Find/Change to replace the substituted cahracters with real breaks.

           

          Peter

          • 2. Re: Merging multiple records onto one page
            bookreviewer Community Member

            Thanks for that response, Peter.  Now, here's another problem to tack onto the solution you provided.  My goal is to have a single ID file for one book category (say, Popular Fiction) that I can simply select all and paste into the newspaper layout.  If all records merge into my ID Merge file as separate text boxes, is there a way for me to quickly/easily select all of them?

            • 3. Re: Merging multiple records onto one page
              P Spier CommunityMVP

              You'll find a nifty script, I think, on the Rorohiko site, that will thread all the individual records into a single story (I think it's called text stitich or something like that. The strategy is to run it, then delete everything but the first frame, resize the frame to fill the page, then pick up the overset text and auto-flow onto the rest of the document. From there you can select all and copy. For that matter, if you just want to copy and paste somewhere else, you could probably skip the part about deleting and autoflowing, and just do a select all and copy.

              • 4. Re: Merging multiple records onto one page
                bookreviewer Community Member

                Thanks for the site reference, Peter.  That worked wonderfully!  Now I just have to fiddle with the data merging into InDesign to have that working smoother.  It's pretty finicky.

                 

                Heidi

                • 5. Re: Merging multiple records onto one page
                  P Spier CommunityMVP

                  bookreviewer wrote:


                  It's pretty finicky.

                   

                  Heidi

                  It is, indeed.

                   

                  You should also know that there are some known problems with Data Merge and CS4 (patches on the way soon, we hope). I think they are pretty much restricted to data files that have records with null or blank fileds, but be sure you proof carefully.

                   

                  It occurs to me that you might also be able to set this up as a regular text file place operation if the Data Merge fails, but that's going to be pretty complex, too, so let's keep our fingers crossed.