5 InDesign Data Merge Limitations (SOLVED)

#indesigntutorial #datamerge #adobe #adobeindesign #learnindesign

Hello everyone, this video is about common limitations I've ran in to when using Data Merge feature in Adobe InDesign. There are ways to do way more with InDesign and solve for some of these limitations but in this video I just show what I've encountered directly in InDesign without using any third party apps or programs.

If you have a solution or suggestions for some of these limitations please comment below to help me out and help out the InDesign community!

Thank you for watching!

[BoyceBailey]

Text content replace all the \r\n carriage return line feeds in excel with a Pipe | or other hardly used ascii character(s). Do a grep find and replace for | with \r with InDesign. may have to use a text editor (sublime) to fix the csv. All be done with find and replace too.

you can also GREP styles and apply character styles to specific characters to put superscript back.

build several page product layouts all on a master page for all possibilities on many many different layers (should look like a hot mess). After the merge, for each page, turn required layout component off and on.
make sure the step 1 linefeed is 100% working.

[laurasilberberg]

Hi Axel, great videos thanks to you I realised that if I want to create for example a wine price list in indesign and later to be easy to update the info using data merge is not possible because is like the example you show with sizes. In this case were are talking about hundreds of wines with its name and price. There is any wat to bring this info form excel and updated later in indesign? I really appreciate if you could give any advice about how would you approach this problem. Thanks for your help

[TheROCDESIGN]

Excellent video Axel. Really great info. One thing I am having difficulty with is copying the Images text in the gathered folder, each time I select all the files and copy - when I paste into a Numbers column the picture pops in as opposed to the actual text. How can I copy JUST the text file name from a folder? Any help would be most welcome, thanks. Richard ROC Design Ireland.

[caroleclark]

Most of those issues have solves in excel. It just depends if you want to do handwork in excel or in indesign. I’d prefer to do most of it in excel in case I have to rerun the merge. A data merge should get you as close to 100% as possible.

[rolandmol]

You can solve all of these problems using GREP so you get a 100% automated document. For example, as @BoiceBailey mentioned, use the pipe | symbol and a space after it to define a line break and tell InDesign GREP style to find the pipe / space combination, set the pipe to 'no color' and make the space-character a 1000% wide. This will push all following characters to the next line. And for the sizes: you don't have to have InDesign not showing the empty circles, you just have to make sure that they are 'not visible' (fill / line = no color) also to be done with GREP styles.

[prestonprice]

what software do you recommend for auto pdf generation from excel?

[vishwapatil]

Thank you for the video, Can we link the button to URL in the mail merging ?

[mohammedshahidrahman]

Can you show the same example with XML ? Including images . Thanks

[charactersonly]

New subscriber! Awesome tutorials. Can you use data merge for calendars? And is data merge only for Excel?

[Daniel_Geerdsema]

@axelbydesign Is it possible to place more then 1 image?

[snap-n-shoot]

The Data merge functions biggest drawback is the inability to assign a url to a field. So If I have hundreds of records and I want each title to have a url link, it cannot do this automatically, it is still a manual job.

[charactersonly]

With the paragraph error, I believe it's because you created paragraphs. It would be simpler if you don't create paragraphs in excel and simply format in InDesign