Create whatsapp-chat out of text

[leonk22823453]

Hey fellow adobe users,

a couple of months ago, my girlfriends phone broke and so did mine, so all of our chats were lost. A little later, I got them recovered. Now I want to make a book out of them (standard size paper with little features like time and service, other than that normal chat layout).

The big problem: There are a shitton of messages, about fifty-thousand. (So if I just spend one minute per message doing it by hand, I'd take about 850 hours of pure working time)

I would like to automate it, but I don't know if it's possible. The chats are in the following format: "DD.MM.JJ, hh:mm:ss: NAME: MESSAGE"
Does anyone have experience with that kind of stuff?

Thanks a lot in advance.

Leon

[Doug A Roberts]

sounds like maaaaybe a data merge in indesign sort of thing, if anything. what file format do you have the messages in?

[leonk22823453]

I used whatsapp's function to send your chats via e-mail. So normal windows text file.

[Vishu_Aggarwal]

As suggested by Doug..Use Indesign Data Merge option. But for that you will need to covert the txt file of WhatsApp into CSV file for which you can use Excel import feature with fixed width option...refer - Importing Fixed Width Text into Excel - YouTube..

Than create a heading for each column...screenshot for reference -

And export this excel into CSV file.

Open Indesign and you following video which I created for one of client to explain the data merge - Indesign CC 2017 Data Merge - YouTube

[leonk22823453]

This is what is looks like.

[Doug A Roberts]

it's worth asking on the indesign board. i'm not sure the format is suitable for a merge though.

it might be possible with a set of nested styles and/or GREP, but it'd take some serious thinking through.

[cmgap]

InDesign as mentioned above will have more tools suited for creating a book. Using table & paragraph style sheets once you have the text imported into tables is very efficient.

[wrensauer]

Moving to InDesign

[Bubbly_parent6C12]

I cant believe, but im here looking for the way to do the same thing. The best thing I came up with is to use find/change menu and nicknames as a anchor. I figured out how to allign messages in right sides and delete timecodes. That's something

open find/change menu in edit, write (^9^9.^9^9.^9^9, ^9^9:^9^9:^9^9: NICKNAME: ) without brackets in FIND and spacebar in EDIT, click on CHANGE FORMAT, change alignment to right, click on CHANGE ALL - get the text aligned to right without timecode for one person, write the same thing, change the nickname, cancel alignment option, get the text on the left without timecode for another.

I still cant figure out how to form something like text bubbles or paste avatars.

[Bubbly_parent6C12]

looks like we're trying to do the same thing, send me a message on mogunarisovat@bk.ru maybe we'll find something else

[Bubbly_parent6C12]

Indiscripts :: Speeech! [UPDATE]  - that seems to be helpful, but i dont really understand how coding works