Data merge weekly planner with complex daily content

[AstroMariaH]

Hi, everyone!

I am making a weekly planner in InDesign where each day should have listed the sunrise, sunset, moonrise, moonset etc. for three different cities. I have no problem using data merge to fill in all the correct months and dates, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to include all the solar and lunar stats without creating a monster of a spreadsheet.

The challenge is that one row in the spreadsheet represents one week of data in InDesign. And having so many data points for one week, is creating a horrible spreadsheet.

How can I do this? 

Attached images:

– calendar-week.png: How it should look (though I haven't fixed the image of the lunar phases yet, which also needs to be included in the spreadsheet eventually)

– calendar-spreadsheet.png: Spreadsheet where I have all the date-stuff figured out, and only startet to outline the daily time stamps. But it's going to look insane, as there will be 13 data points for each day, and then there is 7 days in a week, so there is going to be 91 data points just for the solar and lunar stats for one week ...

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

What format or platform do you expect to use this planner on? By opening the ID document?

[AstroMariaH]

Hi! This is going to be a physical planner that people can buy. It's part of an astronomical almanac book.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

So it sounds like a one-and-done project, then, and not an ongoing or frequently repeated operation. It may be more efficient to just export the data, import it to the right frames in the planner layout, and format on through. Tagged text would probably speed the effort but as you're discovering, that's another whole chapter of ID use. Might be worth looking up help and tutorial pages to come up to speed on it.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@AstroMariaH 

Instead of DataMerge - it would be easier to use InDesign Tagged Text - but you still need all the required data in the Excel to prepare ID Tagged Text...

And you don't have to have a separate column for each info - you could "combine" them together - so it will cut in half number of sun/moon rises/downs.

Do you export/copy this info from somewhere or do you have to type all this info manually?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I'm completely unclear on the source, destination, workflow or purpose, here. 😛

[AstroMariaH]

All the info will be generated from a computer code, so it's just a matter of finding out how the output of that code should be organized in a spreadsheet.

I will look into Tagget Text, thank you for the tip! I haven't used that before.

[AstroMariaH]

I have been looking into Tagged Text for a few hours, but sadly I don't understand it at all. I can't find any resources explaining how it works or how to use that with a spreadsheet. I would be very thankful for any pointers!

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

@AstroMariaH

There are not many resources.

The best way is to prepare sample text - style / format it the way you need it - then export and analyse.

Depends on what you want to achieve - you can even treat it as a form to fill - just insert your text in between the tags. 

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Would it be easier to create one template in ID, then edit/replicate/tag in InCopy? (My time with IC can be measured in minutes.)