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Challenges with Data Merging into Placed InDesign Documents

New Here ,
Oct 24, 2024 Oct 24, 2024

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Hey everyone, 

I have been diving into data merging with Indesign and absolutely loving it. Here is a catalog I created for the company I work for. I also have started to utilize separate .indd files to place pages from an indesign file into another indesign document. This has made my documents more editable in a helpful way.

 

I ran into some difficulty using data merge and placed documents. So, I am curious how some of you might approach this task with inDesign. 

 

In one .indd, I have laid out a hang tag for retail products. Image below

Screenshot 2024-10-24 at 10.29.50 AM.png

In another, I "placed" the hang tag on a 13x19 sheet for print. 

Screenshot 2024-10-24 at 10.30.00 AM.png

 I like this approach because when I edit the hang tag, it automatically updates all instances of it in my hang tag layout. However, I am not able to Data Merge to a placed document, AFAIK. And we have close to 500 product variants to create hang tags for, so Data Merge is absolutely necessary. 

 

I'm thinking I need to bite the bullet and simply recreate the layout grid of hang tags everytime I want to change the hang tag design. That way, I don't need to rely on a placed document and can data merge as I usually would. However, I am hoping someone else has another viable solution to share. Thank you for your time!

 

Noah

 

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Community Expert ,
Oct 24, 2024 Oct 24, 2024

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You should create one big INDD document with all your tags - one tag per page - then export PDF as separate pages, then place each separate PDF to your final "contact sheet" document.

 

You can use, included with InDesign for free, Image Catalog script. Or some 3rd party solution.

 

If you create dedicated folder on your drive, with your PDFs and ContactSheet.indd file - you can just re-generate PDFs with the same base name and upload to this folder and then refresh links in the ContactSheet.indd file.

 

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