Unable to use Indesign data merge with facing pages and internal margins

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
October 27, 2021
2 replies
2965 views

Hello all,
I need to insert several images in a layout with facing pages and a wider internal margin for the biding.
I have to paginate a musical score, one jpg image per page, each image takes up the whole page: as I need a wider internal margin for the biding, the layout obviously differs from odd and even pages. The boxes dimensions are identical for all the images but the boxes are positioned slightly to the right for the odd pages and to the left for the even pages.
It seems that data merge works only if the layout is consistent with the first page, ignoring the facing pages layout with wider internal margins (see attached).
Is there a workaround that allows me to insert automatically all the images in such layout with Indesign?
Any advice is welcome,

Laura

Scripting

This topic has been closed for replies.

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

How many pages will be in the final document?

How thick will be the paper?

What kind of binding?

White background all around?

Maybe you are trying too hard to solve the problem that doesn't exists?

...

Looks like I've replied to a very old post 😞 but the solution could be still pretty simple 😉

S

SJRiegel

Legend

I have not tried this recently, but I think if you set up your initial data merge template with equal left and right margins, (with your image frame fitting the margins exactly), you can then change the margins with Layout Adjustment enabled to re-postion all the art.

S

SJRiegel

Legend

Some screen shots of the process

L

lauraferrariAuthor

Participating Frequently

Hi, thank you very much for your prompt and kind reply
it's a little bit tricky but after several attempts it worked: I share the process I came up with thanks to your suggestion (adjusting the margins doesn't solve the problem)

1. create a facing pages layout, setting up the desired internal margins (no need to have equal left-right margins) and only one page to start with (otherwise Id will create double blank pages in the resulting merged document)
2. perform the steps for merging data: the resulting merged document will display the odd pages only (see attached)
3. go to File Menu > Document setup: uncheck and re-check the facing pages option: this will update the facing pages layout displaying odd and even pages correctly and maintaining the desired internal margins set previously

Hope this will be helpful for other people 🙂

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