Data Merge in InDesign for creating personalized catalogs or invitations?

Question

Hi everyone, I’m exploring the Data Merge feature in InDesign to create personalized catalogs and invitations. I’d like to know the best way to set up my spreadsheet (CSV/Excel) and link it with my InDesign template for smooth merging. Are there any tips to avoid common formatting issues, especially with images and variable text fields? Any workflow suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Gord@APL · Answer

I remember from (bitter) experience that CSV doesn't really support line/paragraph breaks in any useful way so, where possible, I would subsitute in dummy characters that I could later Find/Change into the appropriate break.

For collecting the data in the first place, I set up a PDF form featuring a script that automatically stripped out/substituted carriage returns to make this easier.

Edit, supplemental - I also found Tab Delimited slightly more reliable. Also VERY important to ensure there are no unused fields in the CSV. InDesign seems to object to these.

Edit 2 - Keep the CSV file in the same folder as your images, to save on the headache of keeping track of the file path.

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