If you have the graphics in a different location, the field will need the exact path on your computer to the graphic, in a format appropriate for your operating system: For my example, there were three images?OrangeCat.jpg, CuteDog.jpg, and LoveBird.jpg?located in the same folder. The easy way to handle this is to place the images in the same folder as the data-source file. In order to indicate to Data Merge that that field is a graphic, its name must be preceded by the character?in this case, each subsequent line, the record must contain the path for InDesign to find the picture. Handling variable images requires a little more preparation: If you remember from Part 1 there was one field which was for “pet_image”. When you want to link the graphic image, just drag the graphic field name from the palette onto the placeholder graphic frame, and its name should appear. Add commas, spaces, or any formatting you need. As you can see in the card, the data-field names don’t have to be in any particular order, and can be repeated if necessary. The data fields will appear in the text surrounded by double angle brackets.įor text, you can use all of InDesign’s character, paragraph, or frame attributes to format them, including paragraph, character, and object styles. You can either click an insertion point in your text frame (I highlighted my XX placeholders) and double-click the data-field name, or drag and drop the data-field name into place. Next, I moved the data-field names into the layout template. Go back into your text editor, or Microsoft Excel, to delete them as necessary. This can easily happen if you’re using Microsoft Word as a text editor, where tab characters aren’t always visible. Sometimes, you may get an error message, “The data source has one or more empty field names….” This indicates your data source may have extra columns which are empty those must be removed before Data Merge can use them. The palette should be populated with data-field names that match the column heads (top row) of the source file. I chose Select Data Source from the palette menu, and selected the data-source file we created in Part 1. #Indesign data merge cs4 how toWhen first opened, the palette shows the basic instructions for how to use it. To do this, I opened the Data Merge palette (Window > Automation > Data Merge). To create a frame for the pet image, I simply made a placeholder graphic frame with the Rectangle Frame tool. While creating the card I placed “XX” wherever the text data will be inserted. This card was created at its printed trim size, and contained the boilerplate information that doesn’t change (for example, the logo and the text of the card), and data-field placeholders. In Part 2, I’ll show how to create the target document?the InDesign document into which the data will flow?and how to link the data to the document, and preview the results.įirst, I’ll created the reminder card layout for our imaginary veterinary hospital. After describing what Data Merge can do, I described the data-source files it can use. #Indesign data merge cs4 seriesLast week I began a series on using InDesign’s powerful Data Merge feature.
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