Inspiring

Question

Data Merge issue

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
January 31, 2025
17 replies
843 views

I have a data merge document with 12 coupons that fit into a specific text box. The data fits perfectly but the placeholder objects in data merge oversets the text box even though the actual text will fit. How do I get around this. It cannot work if I have a field that is meant to be a single or double digit but the placeholder is a longer name (that is already as short as possible).

Example:

199

<<B$12>><<B¢12>>

The dollar amount is 1

The cents are 99 and are superscript. This easily fits into my text box.

Can anyone help? Thanks so much.

How to

Community Expert

Community Expert

In my experience, the datamerge placeholders are often much larger than the actual output.

I ignore this, and nothing bad results from the generated page or PDF.

In your example, the dollars and cents could be one datamerge field. A properly made nested (or GREP) paragraph style would create the dollars digit and also the superscripted cents digits.

Mike Witherell

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

@Mike Witherell

GREP Style can't add characters?

Community Expert

Community Expert

but it could find the last two digits in a number sting and apply a superscript character style.

Community Expert

Community Expert

Try going direclty to PDF rather than creating an InDesign document

I can't remember exactly it's about 20 years since I did a data merge document.

But something in the back of mind tingles that going to direct to PDF rather than creating a data merged InDesign file works.

https://helpx.adobe.com/ie/indesign/using/data-merge.html#:~:text=Choose%20Export%20To%20PDF%20from%20the%20Data%20Merge%20panel%20menu.

Now that I think of it

Maybe if it's you choose Preview before creating the Data Merge.

I know there's definitely a quirk somewhere with either viewing a Preview or Creating a Merged Document.

And going direct to PDF from the Data Merge panel instead of 'previewing' or 'merged document'.

I'm getting old I guess, memory is failing 😄

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

It's Preview that is the problem.

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

Have you executed DataMerge?

sherry_1442Author

Inspiring

Yes - and that all works fine. The problem is that I want to export each page as a unique name based on one of the data fields.

Robert at ID-Tasker

Legend

Yes - and that all works fine. The problem is that I want to export each page as a unique name based on one of the data fields.

By @sherry_1442

Script can get this info.