Data merge - Multipage and single page content in one csv?

[nicktremblay34]

I am working on creating standardized templates for a lot of different types of content. I have minimal experience with InDesign, but I have gotten data merge working to generate master files for the cover pages of all teh documents we want to create. The problem I am stuck on is trying to bring in multiple addresses from an external source, and having that data on everypage, while maintaining the other data replicating across multiple pages.

To break it down further, the current data merge will insert a cover image, title, and subtitle, and will duplicate the document for each row.
On the same cover page there are 4 other fields that will contain the same content on every one of the cover pages, but I want that content able to be updated from outside of indesign, either in a text file, or  excel. This could also become more that 4 fields in the future, but at the point I could easily update the data files, and the templates to handle that. I want this to be as maintainable as possible and easy to change content to facilitate the content creators to be able to easily edit and update the content without damaging the integrity of the designs.

Is this obtainable with InDesign or should I look at different tools to make these templates?

[Michael Bullo]

Perhaps the easiest solution would be to combine all of your info into a single data merge file. I appreciate that this would produce duplicate content within each row of your data merge file. However, it could be far easier than creating a workflow that involves consecutive data merge processes from multiple sources.

[nicktremblay34]

This is kind of the direction I was thinking, was just making sure Im not doing extra work if there was already an InDesign solution for this. I am going to write a separate script that will collect and combine all the data into a single file that can be used for the data merge.

[Michael Bullo]

Excellent. Whatever path you take, please post your solution back here. I'd be keen to hear how it goes.

[nicktremblay34]

Did some more digging into features of indesign, and I am now working towards creating the content using xml documents, importing xml into inDesign. You can 'tag' differnet sections of the documents within InDesign and if they match the tags in the xml it will automatically fill the content that way. Once I figure out all the details I will definitely outline the entire process in this thread for anyone else looking for a similar solution in the future.

[Michael Bullo]

XML is powerful and could be a great option for you. Best of luck.