It contained a three column text frame on the only page. The data merge was the more simple part of this project.Ī master InDesign single page document was created for the data merge master. Single Excel sheet calling data from 125 sheets, ready to export to InDesign for Data merge. These were saved as CSV for export into InDesign using data merge.Įxample of random and static names – bottom five will be static (highlighted) on each sheet.Ģ9 randomized names with five added static names.Įxcel document with company names, randomized to 125 data sheets. Eight files of randomized names were produced in total.Each sheet would equal one InDesign page. Excel itself has a sheet size limit, so to keep processing time down and stay with in the Excel limit, we spit each set of 500 cards into 4 documents of 125 sheets of 34 randomized companies.All these ! (exclamation mark) prefixed firms were to be the highlighted businesses. The Five static company names were added into the single list, each prefixed with an ! (exclamation mark).The Excel was also built to added a – (hyphen) in front of the remaining 24. The Excel document also Added an ! (exclamation mark) in front of five of the company names. I created an Excel document that took a list of 29 companies, and randomized the order of these companies.Finally, your merged document will be automatically created from the template document you just made. Once you set your preferences, click Ok.Ħ. This will pull up an additional menu with various options on how you want to flow the information into your merged document. After you have everything set, you select Create Merged Document in the Data Merge drop down menu. It is important to set this in your template document before you merge your data.ĥ.
INDESIGN DATA MERGE TEXT FLOW MANUAL
Next, I gave my text box a character style so that I can control the overall look of the signs with less manual work. Once you position your text box, activate it and select the column in the Data Merge window you would like to use.Ĥ. Next, you create a text box and position it in the area of the page you would like the data to appear – remember the current document is only a template that a merged document will be created from.
Once you select your data source, each column title within that spreadsheet document will appear as a list in the data merge window. When prompted, find the spreadsheet document you want to use, but make sure it is saved in. In the Data Merge drop down menu you will find the Select Data Source option. First, you open the Data Merge tool by going to Window > Automation > Data Merge.Ģ. The process is surprisingly simple and can be illustrated below:ġ. This tool will take hours out of manual computation by merging your spreadsheet document into multiple pages of an Indesign document. When considering our work flow I remembered hearing about the ever helpful Data Merge tool in Indesign CS3. The project requires over 400 production files including numerals and braille. We are currently working on an extensive institutional signage project with Johns Hopkins University and Kliment Halsband Architects.