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Dominik5E7E
Participant
November 23, 2020
Question

Adobe InDesign data merge - wrong encoding

  • November 23, 2020
  • 2 replies
  • 4106 views

Hello,

 

I have a python script which I use to generate a CSV file which I later use with Adobe InDesign to generate multiple pdfs using the data merge functionality.

 

When generating the CSV file I use encoding='utf-8' parameter, this produces nice CSV with correct encoding and everything seems okay, however, as soon as I hook up the file to Adobe InDesign and preview the data, there is wrong encoding.

 

I tried UTF-8, Latin 2, Latin 2 MacOS, but nothing seems to work.

 

I have MacOS and the file has Czech characters like ě, š, č, ř, ž, ý, á, í, é etc. these get encoded wrong.

 

What am I missing, I thought that by setting the encoding for the source file it would work, however that doesn't seem to be the case.

 

Could you help me with this?

 

Thank you very much

2 replies

M
Community Expert
Manan JoshiCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 23, 2020

I tested with a sample and UTF-16 BE is working correctly for me.

-Manan

-Manan
D
Dominik5E7EAuthor
Participant
November 23, 2020

Unfortunately using BE instead of LE did not help either. I am now testing whether it would work by changing the file type (CSV and TXT) and delimiter (comma and TAB).

 

Will comment if it works.

 

Thank you

M
Community Expert
Manan JoshiCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 23, 2020

Send me a sample CSV and the indd file, I will test it. Setting it to BE worked well for me and I am using MAC just like you so it should work for you as well.

-Manan

-Manan
M
Community Expert
Manan JoshiCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 23, 2020

Hi @Dominik5E7E,

Could you test by setting the encoding to UTF 16-LE.

-Manan

-Manan
D
Dominik5E7EAuthor
Participant
November 23, 2020

Hello @Manan Joshi ,

thank you very much for your answer.

 

I tried setting the encoding to UTF 16-LE and unfortunately, it didn't help:

 

 

This is how it looks like after testing it with UTF 16-LE encoding.

 

I thought that maybe there is something wrong in my settings of Adobe InDesigns, or of the particular InDesign document I am working with, but I can not seem to find anything that would suggest this in the setting.

 

Any other ideas would be greatly appreciated, thank you

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