Dynamic Text Issues

[nancyr49335962]

I've got an Illustrator issue that is currently giving me a headache. If anybody has any thoughts or suggestions, that would be amazing. Here's what's going on:

I've set up a letter that we are mailing out to over 1,500 customers in Illustrator 5 (I've tried to talk the bank I work for into CC, but sadly it's not in the budget right now). We're wanting to keep the letter the same, but use dynamic text to change the names on each letter. I've set the text to dynamic in the variable panel. I followed a tutorial to convert the Excel (2010 version) spreadsheet with my data into an XML data file. Using the Load Variable Library command in Illustrator, I selected that XML file, but it won't load. I keep getting an error that says my file set is invalid. Thoughts?

[Jeff Witchel, ACI · Accepted solution]

I would suggest doing this in InDesign using Data Merge directly from the Excel file. It's kind of Word's Mail Merge on steroids.

Here's a terrific video tutorial by Michael Murphy about Data Merge i InDesign: http://www.theindesigner.com/podcasts/tid43_theindesigner_43.mp4

[nancyr49335962]

Thank you for your help.  I really appreciate it.

[Jeff Witchel, ACI]

You're quite welcome!

[Silly-V]

The Illustrator VI script should work for CS5:

http://hypertransitory.com/blog/2016/05/01/adobe-illustrator-variable-data-new-variable-importer/