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Stephen25078528nwj6
Participant
August 17, 2023
Question

Best way to handle import of long csv tables in Indesign???

  • August 17, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 1528 views

Ok hoping someone can help because it shocks me how difficult this simple task is and how Adobe of all things dont have good tables considering Indesign is used for books and mags .  I have a csv file with say 300-400 rows of data but it changes every day. The idea was that this csv file which changes could be linked with datamerge to a table with headings in Indesign. Then every day all I would have to do is update link and table which would span multiple pages would update.  Whenever I try this I end up with 300 seperate one row pages. Obviously not what anyone would want .  I have seen there is 3rd party scripts etc but I honestly cannot believe that Adobe dont have an option to data merge long tables. Surely I am missing something here?  Really need help on this as  turning csv into a nice JPEG is also not proofing the best idea either. 

 

Regards

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    1 reply

    Joel Cherney
    Community Expert
    Joel CherneyCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    August 17, 2023

    Your idea seems good, but you're having some implementation challenges. There are two issues,here. First, I think that you must not be setting up your merge correctly. When you're doing a merge, you select your data source, put your fields into your table, and then select "Create Merged Document." In that dialog, you must choose Multiple Records in the dropdown next to "Records per Document Page."

     

    But! issue number 2, is that you can't really merge into a table in InDesign in the way you're trying to do it. The methods I've used in the past in your situation are a) place and link an .xlsx instead (you can get InDesign to treat text and spreadsheet files as linked file that you can update, in the File Handling section of the Preferences), or b) use a script that allows merging into tables. Here's an IndesignSecrets article about one such solution.

     

    Lastly, if you want better tools to handle this kind of data-driven publishing, you may want to look at a third-party tool like InCatalog or EasyCatalog. 

      S
      Stephen25078528nwj6Author
      Participant
      August 17, 2023

      Thanks for the reply. Ill look into this. But I just find it shocking that  Adobe who charge hundreds a year for software ,who are working on firefly and AI can't even get the tables sorted first. Working with tables in Indesign is worse than Word or Excel, and people have been complaining about it for years it seems.

      Joel Cherney
      Community Expert
      Joel CherneyCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      August 17, 2023

      I personally find Indesign's tables implementation to be curiously limited in one or two ways, but never counterintuitive or crashy, unless I happen to be working in a right-to-left language. I've hated tables in MS Word for decades, (counterintuitive? check! crashy? check!) so much so that I'm kinda incapable of even imaging your existence - a person who prefers Word tables to InDesign tables? No harm in having different preferences, though.  People have been complaining about every implementation of tables in word processing & layout apps for years.  I'm not surprised that people pick up a new app and recoil in horror at its implementation of table handling, or whatever. Same thing happens to me, sometimes. 

       

      Anyhow, I've never felt too limited by the Indesign devs never having made tabluar data merge easy to do. I've needed to do easily-updated data merges of tabular numerical data more than once, and I've used a different method pretty mich every single time. I've already told you about a few, and I could cook up a few more options if you'd like.  But don't just be shocked! Instead, go over to uservoice.indesign.com and upvote the feature request that the Indesign devs make it easier to work with tables & data merge. Similarly, if you want me to offer a few additional alternate solutions, feel free to post about it and I'll respond with a few more alternatives. 

       

       

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