InDesign Data Merge Scripting for Dummies : )

Question

Can anyone help with creating a simple script to automate Data Merge in InDesign?

I've designed a calendar page in InDesign and I'm trying to automate populating each month. For example, in InDesign I can link my text file and map the "month" field and create an output of all my calendar pages for the year. Is there a way to create a script so I don't have to manual map the "month" field and automatically create the output file?

This sounds simplistic and not that time consuming but I'm trying to understand the concept in running a simliar script with a lot of mapped fields which would be time consuming to do.

Thanks in advance for the help!

Colin Flashman · Answer

I don'tagree with the script being simple. I've made my own calendar script that makes wall planners over at colecandoo and the script is very complicated.

Mike has provided a link to an excellent pre-made script that will build calendars for you. My script just does four styles of wall planner, but there are other ways to accomplish this task. A method I use for monthly calendars in planner diaries that I make is to link to an excel spreadsheet that contains the appropriate days of the week laid out for the given months, and each year when I have to make a new set of monthly calendars I can either update the links in excel; or have new excel files with the new dates and relink the excel files in indesign. Getting the next year's dates is easy with sites like timeanddate.com under calendars and the dates can usually be copied/pasted into indesign directly or via a text editor such as bbedit.

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